Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to Bob Website's podcast. My guest
Speaker 1: today is Dan Plants Ceio with Twitch. Dan, what is Twitch?
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, Bob, thanks for having me. What
Speaker 2: is Twitch? So? Twitch is a live streaming service. I
Speaker 2: expect a lot of people have heard of it that
Speaker 2: are listening. But it's kind of like you two. But
Speaker 2: we focus completely on live content, so we have tons
Speaker 2: of user generated content where creators go there every day
Speaker 2: to create content and live stream to their audience.
Speaker 1: And how about archiving? Do you archive anything?
Speaker 2: We have a brief period of archive, different policies, but
Speaker 2: our focus is not on archive. In general, people use
Speaker 2: other platforms this. Our focus is for the live, the
Speaker 2: live experience, and the archive is really just uses catch up,
Speaker 2: not as a long term archive.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's say someone is a total newbie, how do
Speaker 1: they get started with Twitch?
Speaker 2: So, Bob, you know what I was saying. As opposed
Speaker 2: to a newbie how to get started with Twitch? I
Speaker 2: think it might be useful to start with a newbie,
Speaker 2: what do the viewers get from Twitch? Because if somebody
Speaker 2: doesn't understand Twitch, I always find it's best to start
Speaker 2: with what the audience cares about. And then talk about
Speaker 2: how somebody starts creating with Twitch. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, go for it.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, So let me describe where Twitch fits in
Speaker 2: the law of the broader space of social media and
Speaker 2: all that. And it's in this very unique spaces. It's
Speaker 2: between it's long form content. In fact, one thing that
Speaker 2: I think we'll talk about, Bob, I want to talk
Speaker 2: some about long form content and music, which is the album,
Speaker 2: which is long form content, and Twitch is long form content.
Speaker 2: But it's also social. So in some ways it's an
Speaker 2: alternative to sitting watching Netflix or Prime Video or something
Speaker 2: like that, because people tend to sit and watch for
Speaker 2: thirty an hour, two hours something like that, but you
Speaker 2: do it with other people, which is a community. Okay.
Speaker 2: And the magic what I've always said about Twitch is
Speaker 2: you have some creator that you care about, that you're
Speaker 2: interested in. If you're a musician, of course, musicians you're
Speaker 2: interested in. And your audience of fans become a community
Speaker 2: because they spend time watching you and they're just sort
Speaker 2: of hanging out with you, and over time they get
Speaker 2: to know each other. So an analogy that you will
Speaker 2: appreciate because we're in a similar age demographic. What I say,
Speaker 2: it's kind of like cheers, a place where everybody knows
Speaker 2: your name, that you show up and everyone says hey,
Speaker 2: nor as soon as you show up the Twitch, And
Speaker 2: that's what happens on Twitch, and the way I describe
Speaker 2: it is I think today in some ways social media
Speaker 2: is now antisocial, whereas what happens with Twitch is you
Speaker 2: really form a community bond from people that spend time
Speaker 2: watching somebody they care about together while they're a.
Speaker 1: Live Okay, that's the concept. Let's go back to my
Speaker 1: earlier question. Let's say I'm a newbie. How do I
Speaker 1: get started?
Speaker 2: Okay, it's pretty simple. You just go to Twitch and
Speaker 2: you create an account and you start streaming.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's buy for Katie here. Let's say you know,
Speaker 1: I want to view other streams. How do I find out?
Speaker 1: What is there?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So when you come to Twitch, you come we
Speaker 2: allow you to search for creators. This is one thing
Speaker 2: that's different, not different, but the way you should think
Speaker 2: about Twitch. Most people they don't just come to twitch
Speaker 2: without anyone that they want to see. Okay. That Usually
Speaker 2: when you come to twitch, it's because you've already been
Speaker 2: exposed to somebody that you know that you have an
Speaker 2: affinity with. If you come to Twitch and you don't
Speaker 2: know anything about anyone, to be honest, it's kind of
Speaker 2: hard to get deep into something. Okay. The way I
Speaker 2: describe it is suppose you're watching a movie or something
Speaker 2: on Netflix and there's a TV series and you don't
Speaker 2: know any of the actors, and none of your friends
Speaker 2: told you it was good, so you have no reason
Speaker 2: to think this is entertaining. It's kind of tough to
Speaker 2: just watch a TV series, right or a movie. And
Speaker 2: with Twitch, usually when you come to Twitch, there's a
Speaker 2: Twitch streamer that you've heard about, that you've seen on
Speaker 2: social media, a musician somebody, and you're coming to watch.
Speaker 2: Then you're not coming to Twitch, you're coming for the creator, Okay.
Speaker 1: In terms of the content, Twitch is famous for live
Speaker 1: video gaming. What percentage of watching is video games?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So now video games, it's about sixty five to
Speaker 2: seventy percent of hours watched overall.
Speaker 1: And what are the other thirty thirty five percent?
Speaker 2: The other thirty thirty five percent is kind of what
Speaker 2: ever you can think of. But I'll talk about where
Speaker 2: the main stuff is. A big category is what's called
Speaker 2: just chatting we're basically someone is just hanging out chatting
Speaker 2: with their community, okay, talking to them, answering questions. But
Speaker 2: then that quickly then pivots into they might be cooking,
Speaker 2: they might be in music. There are a lot of
Speaker 2: folks now and we'll talk more about this that might
Speaker 2: be mixing music or creating music. Okay. A big thing
Speaker 2: is what's called IRL or in real life stream, where
Speaker 2: people go out into the real world with a camera
Speaker 2: and they're doing something at an event somewhere and interacting
Speaker 2: with people, but it goes all the way. There's a
Speaker 2: pizza Princess g runs a pizza shop in Rochester, New York,
Speaker 2: where basically there's a camera on there and she's running
Speaker 2: her pizza shop talking to chat all the time. There's
Speaker 2: a family in Spain that runs a restaurant on Twitch.
Speaker 2: So people run their businesses on Twitch. People knit, people paint, birds,
Speaker 2: people fish, So kind of anything you can think of,
Speaker 2: there's probably somebody doing it live on Twitch.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's use one of those restaurants as an example
Speaker 1: how many people might be watching simultaneously.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I will take the specific ones. There are
Speaker 2: two specific ones I'll talk about. One is piece of
Speaker 2: Princess g Another one is Royas del Gracias, which is
Speaker 2: a family run restaurant about forty five minutes outside of Barcelona.
Speaker 2: That is this wonderful mom and pop whose son got
Speaker 2: it going and they run a very much of a
Speaker 2: family Spanish restaurant. Both those channels they average about a
Speaker 2: thousand what's called average concurrent viewers, which means at any
Speaker 2: point in time, there might be a thousand people watching them,
Speaker 2: and then over the course of a stream, if that
Speaker 2: streams like you know, four or five hours, you probably
Speaker 2: end up getting twenty or thirty thousand people will have
Speaker 2: come by during that four or five hours and have
Speaker 2: watched them.
Speaker 1: Okay, obviously this is a let's use the restaurants as example.
Speaker 1: These are established enterprises. How did they get started?
Speaker 2: So often they just started to do it. In fact,
Speaker 2: so many like what they just do is usually they
Speaker 2: have some type of I'll take the destrasias. Their son
Speaker 2: was someone who was kind of into social media and
Speaker 2: thinking about social media, and they hit their son came
Speaker 2: up with the idea. Okay. Oftentimes they combine this with
Speaker 2: other forms of social media, so they'll be creating short
Speaker 2: form content on YouTuber TikTok or Instagram and then they
Speaker 2: also are streaming on Twitch and it's usually the combination
Speaker 2: with helps grows them an audience.
Speaker 1: Let's say I tune into this pizza parlor. What am
Speaker 1: I gonna see?
Speaker 2: Yeah, what you'll see is she's sitting there making pizza,
Speaker 2: but she's reading Chat and she's interacting with Chat. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'll have people come on that she'll interact with Okay,
Speaker 2: So a lot of times she's talking to Chat while
Speaker 2: she's sitting there making pizza. And sometimes she'll a lot
Speaker 2: of times they'll do fun stuff with Chat, Like sometimes
Speaker 2: they'll do something where somebody comes in and they have
Speaker 2: Chat choose the what what they're going to put on
Speaker 2: a pizza? Right, they do something fun like that, so
Speaker 2: the person gets that Chat creates a pizza. But the
Speaker 2: biggest thing is you just see her and the other
Speaker 2: folks in her workforce just living their life, but then
Speaker 2: engaging with their audience while they're doing it.
Speaker 1: What is the monetization for the restaurant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we monetize by two ways. We monetize by ads,
Speaker 2: but then we also monetize from money directly from the
Speaker 2: audience and to put it in a context. About seventy
Speaker 2: five percent of the money a creator will make is
Speaker 2: going to come directly from their audience, okay, and that
Speaker 2: comes primarily in two ways. One way is what's called
Speaker 2: to subscription. So when I get a subscription to a channel,
Speaker 2: it's not a subscription to access content as you normally
Speaker 2: think of a subscription, because the content is free. The
Speaker 2: subscription is a form of patronage. And when I subscribe
Speaker 2: to a channel, first of all, I get no ads,
Speaker 2: so it's ads free when I'm on the channel. But
Speaker 2: then I also get status in the community because I
Speaker 2: am supporting this creator, right, and then you also get access.
Speaker 2: Creators all create what are emotes. These are really emoji
Speaker 2: cons which they create a language for their community, and
Speaker 2: they'll create one for happy, for sad, for cry, for whatever,
Speaker 2: and when you subscribe, now you get to speak that language.
Speaker 2: But the big reason for subscribing is really to support
Speaker 2: the creator. And then I forget exactly how many years
Speaker 2: ago we added this concept of a gift subscription, okay,
Speaker 2: which was really important for Twitch. Over half of our
Speaker 2: revenue from subscriptions come from gift subscriptions, and that's where
Speaker 2: suppose I'm paying six months a month to subscribe to
Speaker 2: you right now. But right now, I'll only give you
Speaker 2: fifty bucks. Okay. What I do is that buy ten
Speaker 2: gift subscriptions, and these are subscriptions to go out to
Speaker 2: other members of the community. Okay, but really I'm the
Speaker 2: money all goes to you, okay, but psychologically, I'm giving
Speaker 2: the money to the community. And so the way I
Speaker 2: kind of describe it is, suppose you're watching someone busk
Speaker 2: and you go and drop five dollars in their hat,
Speaker 2: and now everyone who's watching gets some candy or something. Right,
Speaker 2: what happens is everyone in the community goes, oh, thanks
Speaker 2: for the subscriptions, and they celebrate them. Okay, the creator
Speaker 2: celebrates them. So it's this form of patronage and acknowledgment
Speaker 2: which generates a meaningful amount of money for these people
Speaker 2: that are creating content.
Speaker 1: Okay. On a more granular level, something like, since we've
Speaker 1: been talking about something like the restaurant, how many of
Speaker 1: the people watching are subscribers?
Speaker 2: It will probably be It varies a lot for different
Speaker 2: sized channels, Okay, but I would probably say at any
Speaker 2: given time, think of it as five to ten percent
Speaker 2: or something like that. Ten percent maybe.
Speaker 1: Let's say I am the creator.
Speaker 3: A.
Speaker 1: How do I establish the price point? B? Is it
Speaker 1: like Patreon where you can have multiple price points or
Speaker 1: you know something like that. How do I do that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we go ahead and canonicalize the price points. Okay.
Speaker 2: There's been a lot of discussion of whether or not
Speaker 2: for different folks we should change that. But right now,
Speaker 2: we actually have three levels of subscription. Tier one, which
Speaker 2: is the default that most people get, Tier two, and
Speaker 2: Tier three, and it's in US it's six dollars. I
Speaker 2: think it's twelve dollars. I forget Tier two, and then
Speaker 2: twenty five dollars okay, and then you get some additional
Speaker 2: status and benefits if you have a Tier two or
Speaker 2: Tier three subscription. Okay, but most of the people are
Speaker 2: Tier one subscriptions, and we made the decision to make
Speaker 2: it consistent across the site that everything has the same price,
Speaker 2: as opposed to having lots of price variability.
Speaker 1: Okay, to what degree does the creator have to say, hey,
Speaker 1: come on subscribe, come on subscribe, or is it in
Speaker 1: the window? How does that work?
Speaker 2: Well, it sort of happens naturally, meaning people that are
Speaker 2: watching Twitch kind of do it. So I'll use an
Speaker 2: example for myself, I stream not as much as I
Speaker 2: would like, okay, but I try to swim at least
Speaker 2: once a week. Now, any of Now, I don't need
Speaker 2: my audience to give me money, right and so, in fact,
Speaker 2: by the way, any of the money that I get
Speaker 2: from twitch, I go ahead and donate to charity. But
Speaker 2: people still subscribe to me all the time, and I
Speaker 2: don't do anything to try and encourage them. Now, most
Speaker 2: of our creators do things to encourage people to subscribe, okay,
Speaker 2: to get the ball rolling. So I'll just go through
Speaker 2: a few examples. First of all, one thing that we
Speaker 2: do is we have this thing called a hype train,
Speaker 2: which has been very successful, which once people start subscribing
Speaker 2: at the same time like a subscription or a gift,
Speaker 2: and you cross a threshold, then a hype train starts.
Speaker 2: And hype trains go to different levels, and I think
Speaker 2: the record is like level one hundred and ten, and
Speaker 2: as they get higher, we give out these emodes to
Speaker 2: the community. So the community gets excited and says, let's
Speaker 2: get level five, let's get level six, let's get level seven, right,
Speaker 2: and of course the streamer is all excited. It's like, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm getting I'm on a level five hype train. Come on, guys,
Speaker 2: let's go to level six. Okay. So that's something that
Speaker 2: we do that creates this kind of moment okay, that
Speaker 2: gets lots of people saying, ooh, I want to be
Speaker 2: part of this okay. But then streamers will do a
Speaker 2: ton of stuff on their own okay. So for example,
Speaker 2: one thing that's very common twitch is people do like subathons,
Speaker 2: where they agree that if they reach so many subs,
Speaker 2: they'll do certain things. Okay. The other thing they do
Speaker 2: is sometimes they even stream for two weeks, three weeks,
Speaker 2: thirty days. Whereas people keep giving money, it extends how
Speaker 2: long they have to stream, okay. So they're kind of saying,
Speaker 2: I will stream so much time for every dollar I receive,
Speaker 2: and it has a counter so as people give money
Speaker 2: and they keep the stream going even while they're sleeping, okay.
Speaker 2: And so that creates this sort of communal experience and
Speaker 2: excitement that gets everyone sort of contributing. So creators usually
Speaker 2: do a fair amount, but they don't have to.
Speaker 1: Are you familiar with this book? Just watch me by
Speaker 1: leor Tour?
Speaker 2: I am not. It sounds like one I need to read.
Speaker 1: You have to read it because it's exactly what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. It's a new book and it's about someone
Speaker 1: who live streams and is raising money, and it deals
Speaker 1: with all the concepts you're talking about. So you know,
Speaker 1: ultimately we can talk about the themes, which would be
Speaker 1: something different, but the mechanics are exactly what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Just watch me Lee or l I O R, I
Speaker 1: see it, R.
Speaker 2: I'll get it. I just searched on my computer and
Speaker 2: it's sitting right here for me to start reading. And
Speaker 2: by the way, one thing you mentioned, which is a
Speaker 2: really important thing to note. I mean a huge thing
Speaker 2: on Twitch is fundraising, and which is not surprising if
Speaker 2: you go back in fundraising and you think of Jerry
Speaker 2: Lewis telethon right, which was kind of the foundation of
Speaker 2: fundraising Saint Jude's. I think they've raised over sixty million
Speaker 2: on Twitch from creators that actively do things on stream
Speaker 2: to raise money. And every year there are millions and
Speaker 2: millions of dollars raised by creators who decide that's a
Speaker 2: big part of what they want to do. And so
Speaker 2: as opposed to you know, they will do these things,
Speaker 2: but they do these things for contributions to a charity
Speaker 2: that they care deeply about.
Speaker 1: Let's say I'm part of the audience and I subscribe.
Speaker 1: You know, when you're fundraising, their people say I pledge
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars and then frequently they don't come through.
Speaker 1: So if I say I subscribe, what are the mechanics
Speaker 1: of collecting the money?
Speaker 2: We take care of all that. When you pay you,
Speaker 2: we get it right. You have a we have a
Speaker 2: credit card with you, we charge it. It's charged right away.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I'm there and I click subscribe, My credit
Speaker 1: card gets charged.
Speaker 2: Their credit card gets charged, and just like anything, there's
Speaker 2: always challenges with some charge back because you're a credit card.
Speaker 2: But yes, your credit card gets charged.
Speaker 1: Okay. Let's say I am the streamer. When do I
Speaker 1: get paid?
Speaker 2: So right now, let me get the exact about we
Speaker 2: pay out every I'm forgetting if it's every fifteen days
Speaker 2: or every thirty days, I should know exactly. We've changed
Speaker 2: it recently, but basically think of it every I'm pretty
Speaker 2: sure it's every fifteen days, maybe every thirty days. That
Speaker 2: we basically on cycle payout. Right, we have a we
Speaker 2: have a cycle payout, and that we do need some
Speaker 2: buffer in terms of charge backs and other things, because
Speaker 2: once we pay you, we don't pull anything back, so
Speaker 2: you know it's not too long.
Speaker 1: So let me understand, I have no AD and I'm
Speaker 1: a streamer. People are subscribing. I get one hundred cents
Speaker 1: on the dollar to me.
Speaker 2: No, that's a REP share. It's a rep share.
Speaker 1: So what is the REV share?
Speaker 2: The rev share? It depends upon. We have different levels. Okay,
Speaker 2: for an average for you know, a regular smaller streamer,
Speaker 2: it's fifty to fifty. We have what's called our our
Speaker 2: Plus program for most of our established streamers, they get
Speaker 2: either sixty forty or seventy thirty, and most of them
Speaker 2: get seventy thirty. Okay, seventy percent of the revenue goes
Speaker 2: to them. And the way we kind of the reason
Speaker 2: we have the different levels, as we thought about it,
Speaker 2: is for those people we're streaming is a core part
Speaker 2: of how they fund their life. Okay, this is how
Speaker 2: they pay their bills. We tried to make it so
Speaker 2: that we could get most of them to seventy thirty.
Speaker 2: So that's why we have these thresholds based upon the
Speaker 2: number of subscribers you have, and we kind of set
Speaker 2: it so that those people that are in general depending
Speaker 2: upon this for their livelihood, and whereas there are a
Speaker 2: lot of people that do it pick myself for example.
Speaker 2: They do it out of passion and they may get
Speaker 2: some additional money, but you know, then they'll be at
Speaker 2: fifty to fifty.
Speaker 1: Let's just say I'm a household name musician and I
Speaker 1: have a lot of subscribers. I'm not living on the
Speaker 1: money I'm making from Twitch, but am I going to
Speaker 1: get fifty to fifty or seventy thirty?
Speaker 2: You don't have to, meaning if you have other stuff,
Speaker 2: as long as you have a certain amount of subscriptions
Speaker 2: to you, it'd end up getting seventy thirty.
Speaker 1: So really it's got less to do with whether the
Speaker 1: person is living solely on Twitch money.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, it's all about we have objective thresholds
Speaker 2: about how many we have subscriber points. I won't go
Speaker 2: into the details right because it's very inside baseball, but
Speaker 2: it's basically how many subscribers you have. It's a little
Speaker 2: more complicated because of our tears, but it's how many
Speaker 2: subscribers you have that determines it, and it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: We just set the threshold to try and approximate. Here's
Speaker 2: a threshold where if like, if this was your only
Speaker 2: source of income it is, you know, you would be
Speaker 2: depending upon this. But that's just how we set the threshold.
Speaker 1: Okay, we know, mister beast in other clouds forms, what
Speaker 1: is the most anybody is making from Twitch?
Speaker 2: Ah? So let me This is what I'll talk about
Speaker 2: for a second because it's important as you think about
Speaker 2: our bigger streamers, and this is true in general in
Speaker 2: the influencer marketplace. There is how much money they're making
Speaker 2: from Twitch, but then how much money they're making off
Speaker 2: of Twitch through direct sponsorship deals. And as you grow
Speaker 2: basically when you first start out, you primarily make your
Speaker 2: money from subscriptions. Okay, I've talked about. Then as you
Speaker 2: get bigger, you also get ads because we have ads
Speaker 2: as an important partner. As you get bigger, ads becomes
Speaker 2: a more important part of your revenue stream.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, time time out. These are the ads that Twitch.
Speaker 2: Provides, Yes, that Twitch provides I know, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to get so Twitch will run ads, right, So you
Speaker 2: have your subscriptions, okay, then you have ads that we
Speaker 2: run on the channel Okay that are also a revshare.
Speaker 1: Okay, and what is the revshare on that?
Speaker 2: The same is fifty five to forty five to you,
Speaker 2: forty five to us okay. And then you have any
Speaker 2: direct sponsorship money that you bring in okay, Okay, Meaning
Speaker 2: a creator can get sponsored directly from a brand to
Speaker 2: do something or twitch or to post on other social
Speaker 2: media as part of their Twitch following because they have
Speaker 2: an audience. Okay. As you get bigger, it may be
Speaker 2: that fifty percent of your revenue comes off Twitch. You're
Speaker 2: still getting it because of Twitch and your Twitch following,
Speaker 2: but fifty percent of your revenue doesn't come through Twitch,
Speaker 2: and we don't get any cut of that, okay. So
Speaker 2: that is quite common. And you know, if you're creating
Speaker 2: content on Instagram, often all of your revenue comes from
Speaker 2: off Instagram. You get almost nothing from Instagram, right And
Speaker 2: same thing with TikTok So how much does? I don't
Speaker 2: want to quote any numbers because it's like twitch streamers
Speaker 2: makes in the top. Twitch streamers makes in the millions
Speaker 2: and millions of dollars, right, and so I don't want
Speaker 2: to say any numbers, especially.
Speaker 1: Where we'll be very specific. Are there people making seven
Speaker 1: figures solely from twitch? I'm sure they're making sponsorship money
Speaker 1: in addition to.
Speaker 2: People making seven figures solely from Twitch.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, conventional YouTube influencers where it starts, they've migrated
Speaker 1: to other platforms. A there is a real focus on frequency.
Speaker 1: Unless you're posting at a certain level, you can't gain traction.
Speaker 1: And then a lot of them are so busy posting
Speaker 1: that they burn out. Jena Marbles, all these original influencers,
Speaker 1: they're doing it and then they can't do it anywhere emotion.
Speaker 2: So let's see. First of all, let me describe for
Speaker 2: a second how twitch works to begin with, and then
Speaker 2: what it takes to sustain. Okay, the foundation of Twitch
Speaker 2: is the community you build and the fact that there
Speaker 2: is a connection between people watching you and it is
Speaker 2: the fact to get a sense of community. It takes
Speaker 2: a certain amount of streaming for those people to build
Speaker 2: that what I call a horizontal connection. For those people listening,
Speaker 2: they won't see my hands going together, but I call
Speaker 2: it a horizontal because you recognize each other in chat. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm going to do a quick divergence here to tell you,
Speaker 2: you know, a story about that that'll kind of put
Speaker 2: it to life. I was actually in the Middle East
Speaker 2: and I talked. I was talking to a streamer from
Speaker 2: the Arabic World and she was talking about how she
Speaker 2: went on stream and one of her audience members wasn't
Speaker 2: there and she is used to that audience member being
Speaker 2: there regular She's like, what's happening and she asked everyone
Speaker 2: in chat, and everyone in Chat was like, yeah, I
Speaker 2: haven't seen him either. I haven't seen her on this
Speaker 2: other channel, because they all knew who this person was.
Speaker 2: So she started trying to figure out if he was okay, okay,
Speaker 2: and did whatever information and she couldn't figure out. He
Speaker 2: came back a week later and she was like, Oh,
Speaker 2: we're so glad you're here. We're worried. In all of
Speaker 2: Chat was saying this too, because all of Chat knew
Speaker 2: who this person was and was connected to this person. Right.
Speaker 2: It turns out he did have a modestly serious injury. Okay.
Speaker 2: He was really touched that they noticed that he was gone.
Speaker 2: The interesting part of the story is his immediate family,
Speaker 2: who he doesn't live with, did not know he was
Speaker 2: ever sick because he doesn't talk to them regularly, so
Speaker 2: they didn't notice that he was like in the hospital.
Speaker 2: He didn't contact them. They didn't notice, but his Twitch
Speaker 2: community knew the day that something happened on him. And
Speaker 2: it wasn't just the streamers of the community. So countless
Speaker 2: stories I've heard of people meeting their mate just by
Speaker 2: building the connections on Twitch. So I say that because
Speaker 2: an important part of Twitch for the viewer isn't just
Speaker 2: watching the content. It's feeling connected to the other people
Speaker 2: and talking to them and getting to know them. So
Speaker 2: going back to your question, when you get going, you
Speaker 2: have to stream on some regularity to form that, Bob. Okay,
Speaker 2: if you already have some notoriety, I often tell people, oh,
Speaker 2: if you stream two to three times a week, two
Speaker 2: to three hours a stream, you can build a sense
Speaker 2: of community. Now there are exceptions to that. I'll think
Speaker 2: myself as an example, Bob, you would be someone that
Speaker 2: might be an exception. I only stream once a week.
Speaker 2: But I'm notable in that I was CEO, and even
Speaker 2: though I only stream once a week, I still have
Speaker 2: that sense of community from the folks who watch them.
Speaker 1: Okay, when you stream, how do people know when you're
Speaker 1: gonna stream?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I might post something on social media it says, oh,
Speaker 2: I'm going live. But in general, for most people that stream,
Speaker 2: I tell them maintain a schedule. Okay, say I'm going
Speaker 2: to stream every Monday and Thursday from seven to ten. Okay,
Speaker 2: because you're going to find those members of your audience
Speaker 2: that have that that are just free in that time period. Okay.
Speaker 2: So usually it's good to have some schedule. You can
Speaker 2: stream off schedule, but try to have some schedule to
Speaker 2: build that community. Okay. Twitch sends notifications out whenever you
Speaker 2: go live, So basically, once people are watching Twitch and
Speaker 2: they follow you, then whenever I go live, the folks
Speaker 2: that and I am not good at maintaining a schedule
Speaker 2: as an example, Bob, because my schedule is very erratic,
Speaker 2: but they all get notifications as soon as I go live.
Speaker 2: It says dan is live, Dan is live, Dan is live,
Speaker 2: and so a lot of times they just start showing
Speaker 2: up because they get the notification that I'm live, and
Speaker 2: they're like, oh cool, I want to drop in. Okay.
Speaker 2: If I want to tell people in advance, then usually
Speaker 2: we do have ways within Twitch, but most people use
Speaker 2: social media to say go on live tomorrow at ten,
Speaker 2: because that's where people spend a lot of their time
Speaker 2: is on Instagram or TikTok and so they post something
Speaker 2: on there okay.
Speaker 1: Twitch provided ads are those of break in the stream
Speaker 1: or is it a bug that sits on the screen?
Speaker 1: How does that look like? Doesn't work?
Speaker 2: The answer is both Okay. Basically I would broadly characterize
Speaker 2: three types of ads. We do have pre roll media
Speaker 2: ads that might occur when someone shows up at a channel. Okay,
Speaker 2: most of the video ads will be a mid roll
Speaker 2: where the streamer marks they control. Every streamer controls what
Speaker 2: the AIRD load is on their channel. Okay, So they
Speaker 2: can run three minutes of ads, they can run six
Speaker 2: minutes of ads. They decide how many ads okay, they
Speaker 2: define when the breaks are okay. Now, it's important to
Speaker 2: note the subscribers aren't getting ads, So just because it's
Speaker 2: an AD break, it doesn't mean that the streamer goes away.
Speaker 2: Don't think if the guy gets up and leaves, usually
Speaker 2: he's still doing something, but he takes into account and
Speaker 2: AD break. And then we also have non interruptive ads okay,
Speaker 2: because obviously that's something we want to get more for
Speaker 2: the creators, it's better to minimize the interruptive ads. So
Speaker 2: we do have some placements that are non interrupted that
Speaker 2: you can see while you're watching the stream.
Speaker 1: Okay, going back to sponsorships, you know you have a
Speaker 1: lot of people in general influencers or hawking products and
Speaker 1: it undercuts their credibility. How would you advise someone who's
Speaker 1: doing that on Twitch, someone who has external sponsors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what I often say is you want to make
Speaker 2: sure there's an authenticity to when you are doing a sponsorship.
Speaker 2: When you look at the amount of money that somebody
Speaker 2: makes directly from their audience, which again is different. You know,
Speaker 2: if you look at the short form, people are making
Speaker 2: a lot of money directly from their audience. On Twitch,
Speaker 2: they are making a lot of money directly from their audience.
Speaker 2: So if you go on and show for a product
Speaker 2: you don't believe in to these people that are paying
Speaker 2: to support you in general, like, that's not a great idea,
Speaker 2: right if you don't believe in the other And so
Speaker 2: the magic that works, and this is what I often
Speaker 2: talk when I when I talk to brands is I
Speaker 2: talk about the fact that to three quarters of the
Speaker 2: money we make doesn't come from add It comes directly
Speaker 2: from viewers pockets. And that means those viewers are emotionally
Speaker 2: engaged with the content Okay. So it's actually because what
Speaker 2: you're trying to do with an AD is create emotional transference,
Speaker 2: right that I have a positive feeling towards you. You
Speaker 2: have an association with this brand. So now I have
Speaker 2: a positive association with filling the Brank brand. Okay. And
Speaker 2: so I often tell streamers, I say, look, you should
Speaker 2: make sure that you like to some degree believe in
Speaker 2: this brand. And it's not just you, you know, being
Speaker 2: a shrill show for whatever they say, because you know
Speaker 2: that matters to your community.
Speaker 1: Okay, I follow X and do I have the same
Speaker 1: ability to chat as someone who subscribes?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? You know. Now, well let me add it on.
Speaker 2: Let me add one caveat the streamer can control who
Speaker 2: can chat in their chat. So the streamer has a
Speaker 2: lot of control. Okay. So for example, they can put
Speaker 2: their chat in subscribe or only chat if they so choose.
Speaker 2: So if they put their chat in subscribe or only chat,
Speaker 2: and sometimes a larger streamer might do that or might
Speaker 2: do that for a certain portion of his stream to
Speaker 2: reward those people that are subscribers. Okay, you can put
Speaker 2: it and follower only chat. Okay, sometimes you might do
Speaker 2: that to avoid just a lot of noise from the
Speaker 2: people that don't. Okay, So the creator decides who can
Speaker 2: participate in chat. I'd say most creators don't restrict it
Speaker 2: to subscribe only chat as a general rule. I think
Speaker 2: that's more the exception that somebody will limit it to
Speaker 2: subscribeer only chat.
Speaker 1: And to what degree is it important for the streamer
Speaker 1: to chat with the audience as opposed to the audience
Speaker 1: chatting amongst itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm gonna say it doesn't matter for the
Speaker 2: streamer to type into chat, right, okay, because they're talking.
Speaker 2: The real question is to what degree is it important
Speaker 2: for the streamer to interact with chat? Okay? And in general? Now,
Speaker 2: sometimes you may be doing streams or you don't do it,
Speaker 2: and that's okay, But in general it's pretty important, okay,
Speaker 2: because the thing that like, everyone wants to be heard, okay,
Speaker 2: And when I'm watching and you just say hey Kevin
Speaker 2: verse seven, you know, yeah, let me answer your question
Speaker 2: or thanks for being here. Like when I start streaming,
Speaker 2: the first thing I do is for the first people
Speaker 2: that show up in chat, because I turn it on
Speaker 2: and then people say, hey Dan, what's happening? Hey, I
Speaker 2: go yo, Kevin verse seven, glad to see you again,
Speaker 2: and oh, Vix and Bena, glad you're here. Oh. And
Speaker 2: I'm sitting there calling out all these people, right, and
Speaker 2: so that is part of building the sense of belonging
Speaker 2: because I'm showing that I hear them. Okay, and so
Speaker 2: most of our streamers spend some amount of time paying
Speaker 2: attention to chatt to show that they care.
Speaker 1: Okay, this goes with the territory, and I have to
Speaker 1: ask these people become somewhat public, to what degree are
Speaker 1: their issues of stalking and other infringing upon someone's privacy
Speaker 1: or space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so everyone needs you know, the reality is in
Speaker 2: today's world, notable people need to be cognizant of this.
Speaker 2: We have very strict rules around boxing and boxing off
Speaker 2: platform as well as on platform. So in fact, if
Speaker 2: ever someone is doing that which is sharing private information,
Speaker 2: we take that seriously. We ban them from Twitch. So
Speaker 2: in general, that's not something that that happens a lot.
Speaker 2: But of course as you get bigger, and it varies
Speaker 2: depending upon the creator, you have to be very cognizant
Speaker 2: because you're becoming a public figure in today's world. Okay,
Speaker 2: one of the factors, there's one issue about what i'll
Speaker 2: call your personal safety, okay, in terms of where you're at,
Speaker 2: and as you get bigger, you have to be cognizant
Speaker 2: of that. Which is unfortunate that that's the case, right,
Speaker 2: but that is the world we live in. One thing
Speaker 2: that's really interesting about when you're on Twitch, though, is
Speaker 2: you can control and you can ban people from your chat.
Speaker 2: So one of the problems in today's social media world
Speaker 2: is you post something and you have all the trolls
Speaker 2: that are there responding, whether it's on X or Instagram
Speaker 2: and commenting or whatever. Right, So if you say something
Speaker 2: on X, you have all these people that will attack you.
Speaker 2: And if there's anyone you're a fan of, any musician
Speaker 2: you love they post something, they're going to be people
Speaker 2: that are going to be, oh, I can't believe you
Speaker 2: did this, you sold out or whatever. Right, And when
Speaker 2: you read all that stuff, it just makes you feel
Speaker 2: like shit, right because you know, let's say you're a
Speaker 2: musician and you're creating stuff and then these people are
Speaker 2: attacking you. Okay, on Twitch, if somebody attacks you in chat,
Speaker 2: we have moderators, we have lots of tools you ban them,
Speaker 2: and what ends up happening it's kind of different in
Speaker 2: other social media and other social media, sometimes fifty percent
Speaker 2: in your comments can be trolls. On Twitch, people tend
Speaker 2: not to just sit there if they don't like you.
Speaker 2: They don't sit there and watch you for two hours. Right,
Speaker 2: They're not going to do that. They might come in
Speaker 2: and say something then you ban them. So the reality is,
Speaker 2: in terms of the abuse you get in chat, I'm
Speaker 2: not saying it's not an issue. It's something we think about.
Speaker 2: It tends to be far less than in other social
Speaker 2: media platforms because you can control who can be engaged
Speaker 2: in your chat.
Speaker 1: Okay, do you block at the user level name or
Speaker 1: the IP address name.
Speaker 2: When somebody bans this account, Okay, it is the person
Speaker 2: who is getting banned. Now, we do a lot of
Speaker 2: work to try and determine when people have duplicate accounts,
Speaker 2: and there are two types of banning. If you violate
Speaker 2: our community guidelines, we may ban you from Twitch. But
Speaker 2: you also can set different standards on your chat that
Speaker 2: are different than Twitches. Okay, so you can say this
Speaker 2: is family friendly. I don't want anyone cursing. Someone curses,
Speaker 2: you can ban them from your chat. Okay, you're banning
Speaker 2: that person. We have various different ways to determine when
Speaker 2: this person is associated with different accounts, and IP is
Speaker 2: one of them. Okay, But so we work to make
Speaker 2: sure that somebody can't do ban evasion. Of course, it's
Speaker 2: always a cat and mouse game because there's no perfect
Speaker 2: formula for that. But conceptually, what it is is we're
Speaker 2: banning the person, not the account.
Speaker 1: Okay. Other than video gaming, which is a world up
Speaker 1: to itself and Twitch really owns, can you name someone
Speaker 1: else who has primarily built their career, reputation, monetary reward
Speaker 1: via Twitch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean I'll take our top streamer who,
Speaker 2: while he gains a little bit, that's not why he's known,
Speaker 2: Miss Kaisano. Okay, our top streamer who was on the
Speaker 2: cover of Time magazine for the Creator of the Year. Okay,
Speaker 2: He's primarily known for the antics that he does, if
Speaker 2: you will, for all the funny stuff that he does
Speaker 2: where he has people over you know, in his you know,
Speaker 2: in his you know house, just doing funny and goofy stuff.
Speaker 2: He has a great clip where he did a stream
Speaker 2: with Kevin Hart where they did a sleepover. Okay, but
Speaker 2: I would start with with Kai, who's you know at
Speaker 2: the you know, at the top of the heap right now.
Speaker 1: On twitch, Okay, I'm a creator, you know these some
Speaker 1: of these terms influencer. There are multiple platforms, There's YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitch,
Speaker 1: What would you say, would you say be on all
Speaker 1: of them? Or really you should be on Twitch and
Speaker 1: dedicate your type of Twitch.
Speaker 2: So, first of all, as opposed to talking about platforms,
Speaker 2: I'm going to talk about content types and then get
Speaker 2: to platforms, okay, and broadly, I think now you should
Speaker 2: think of three types of content live. Okay. What I
Speaker 2: will call is I'm going to use the term long
Speaker 2: form BODVOD for video on demand, and I'm going to
Speaker 2: use the term short form VOD. Okay. Now, the reality
Speaker 2: is the length of the VOD is a continuum, doesn't binorize.
Speaker 2: But in your mind, as we think short form BOD,
Speaker 2: be thinking of thirty seconds to one to two minutes,
Speaker 2: in other words, based the type of experience that YouTube, shorts,
Speaker 2: TikTok and Instagram reels is optimized for. So that's what
Speaker 2: I'm going to call short form. When I think long
Speaker 2: form for now, think of twenty minute videos on YouTube
Speaker 2: or longer. Okay, now, yes, I know there's a gap
Speaker 2: between two to three minutes and twenty minutes. You have
Speaker 2: ten minutes, but just and then live. Okay. So the
Speaker 2: first thing you have to ask, the question is your
Speaker 2: creative expression? What are you trying to create? What are
Speaker 2: you trying to communicate? Okay? And that sometimes dictates the artifact. Okay.
Speaker 2: Short form content is the best content for discovery. The
Speaker 2: reason for that is someone can watch a lot and
Speaker 2: it's very easy for something to go viral. Okay. So
Speaker 2: to use a you know, comparison, someone on TikTok might
Speaker 2: see two thousand creators in a week, okay with this star,
Speaker 2: or three thousand or four thousand someone on twitch watch
Speaker 2: five to ten. I believe someone on YouTube is probably
Speaker 2: in the middle, three hundred or four hundred. Okay. I
Speaker 2: think one thing, and especially later on we might start
Speaker 2: talking about music. There's this thing about emotional attachment between
Speaker 2: the creator, okay, and short form is a great way
Speaker 2: to get discovered, but it isn't a great way to
Speaker 2: form an emotional attachment between the artist, the creator and
Speaker 2: the viewer because you're just one of two to three thousand. Okay.
Speaker 2: If somebody stops creating content, on TikTok you don't even
Speaker 2: know it right because your attachment is to the platform.
Speaker 2: If someone stops streaming on Twitch, then I know it
Speaker 2: within days that they're not streaming right now. That's because
Speaker 2: I'm more emotionally attached. So the way I describe it
Speaker 2: is personally, I think if you want to be discovered,
Speaker 2: that's what you're trying to do. I think short form
Speaker 2: content is the best channel for discovery. Okay, you want
Speaker 2: to build deep connection with your audience, I think live
Speaker 2: is the best way to do that, and it's also
Speaker 2: the best way to turn affinity and affection into dollars directly,
Speaker 2: where they're supporting you directly. Okay. Now, the one caveat
Speaker 2: I will say is live isn't for everyone. Some people
Speaker 2: aren't comfortable live. Some people aren't comfortable being exposed to,
Speaker 2: you know, all the sundrys and everything that they you know,
Speaker 2: might deal with. They're better And that's particularly true from
Speaker 2: a musician's perspective the way I think of it. And
Speaker 2: you know, some musicians finally craft their words and you
Speaker 2: can see them on stage. There's sometimes a little uncomfortable
Speaker 2: in stage because they have this artifact, which is the
Speaker 2: song which is a finely crafted song and that's what
Speaker 2: they're presenting, and they don't want to be answering questions
Speaker 2: and improvising and doing all sorts of stuff. So for
Speaker 2: some people, Live isn't the right thing for them. Okay,
Speaker 2: to enjoy live is you're going to do it because
Speaker 2: it's gonna take time. So the way I would say
Speaker 2: it is everyone as they're thinking about discovery should be
Speaker 2: thinking about using the short form content platforms if you're
Speaker 2: looking for discovery, because it's just the best for discovery,
Speaker 2: that's just the nature of it. Then as you think
Speaker 2: about building a stronger connection, I think that's when you
Speaker 2: want to think about longer form, and I think Live
Speaker 2: is a great form of longer form. I also think
Speaker 2: YouTube can be useful for longer form.
Speaker 1: What about nudity slash pornography?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we don't allow nudity and pornographa on Twitch.
Speaker 2: So that's pretty straightforward not on Twitch, So I won't
Speaker 2: hypothesize if that's what your product is, which platforms to use.
Speaker 2: So we don't allow nudity and pronoraphy itch, we decided
Speaker 2: that's not appropriate for our platform.
Speaker 1: As a practical matter. How do you believe that.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's fairly. We have policies, we have automated techniques
Speaker 2: that detected, but then we also have user reporting in
Speaker 2: case the automated techniques don't work. But in general the
Speaker 2: automated techniques worked pretty well. But we also have a
Speaker 2: fairly rapid where we have a bunch of operators, we
Speaker 2: have useder reporting and within a matter of minutes, if
Speaker 2: something is in violation of our community guidelines, then we're
Speaker 2: able to act and take it down.
Speaker 1: Okay, pulling the lens back in terms of number of
Speaker 1: users in hours. Watch if we graph it, what's going
Speaker 1: on with Twitch.
Speaker 2: Meaning over time? Yes, okay, over time. What you'll see
Speaker 2: is there have been these certain exogatius events that drove
Speaker 2: a lot of growth. Okay, so the first well, you
Speaker 2: could go back and StarCraft was a big thing that
Speaker 2: first drove Twitch. But then as you fast forward you
Speaker 2: get to when Fortnite came out and Twitch had this
Speaker 2: huge resear I'll growth during Fortnite praize. Okay. Part of
Speaker 2: that is because a lot of the folks that were
Speaker 2: creating Fortnite content started streaming, and so there was this
Speaker 2: natural feedback cycle with Fortnite COVID caused another big bump
Speaker 2: okay after COVID then, But like many platforms, because basically
Speaker 2: there are a lot of people at home looking for community,
Speaker 2: looking for connection in Twitch was a great platform and
Speaker 2: also a lot of creators, a lot of musicians to
Speaker 2: come up to me and say, wow, Twitch was a
Speaker 2: lifesaver for me, Like I turned to Twitch because I
Speaker 2: couldn't do shows. Okay. As COVID passed, there was a
Speaker 2: softening of the market, which was this kind of like
Speaker 2: many platforms, if you look over the last year or so, overall,
Speaker 2: it's been you know what, I'll just call you know,
Speaker 2: roughly flat. Okay. Now, I think what has been happening,
Speaker 2: interestingly is Twitch streamers actually have been having a bigger
Speaker 2: impact than ever in terms of their reach and their
Speaker 2: impact on a society. What's happening is there's a more
Speaker 2: seismic shift towards more short form content. Okay. And so
Speaker 2: if I had a metric, which I don't have, by
Speaker 2: the way of viewership of Twitch content on third party
Speaker 2: social media platforms, I'm quite confident it's been up into
Speaker 2: the right the last two years that the impact that
Speaker 2: Twitch creators are having on culture is larger than ever. Okay.
Speaker 2: The end result, by the way, this matters to our creators.
Speaker 2: A big part that's important for Twitch as a business
Speaker 2: is are we creating a platform where our creators can
Speaker 2: sustain a living and you know, reach their audience. And
Speaker 2: the answer is, our creators are bigger than ever in
Speaker 2: terms of the audience they're we are reaching, and so
Speaker 2: I feel very good about that aspect of it.
Speaker 1: Okay, if we look at history, Second Life was going
Speaker 1: to be the future that didn't happen. Snapjack came along.
Speaker 1: Of course, it was initially disappearing videos. We all know
Speaker 1: you can ca after those, et cetera. But it ended
Speaker 1: up being a you've dominated service that did not grow. Okay, Instagram,
Speaker 1: which was purchased by Facebook is generating a lot of
Speaker 1: money as a result of ads, etc. Hey is Twitch
Speaker 1: really the land of young people? Or are old people
Speaker 1: watching Twitchell?
Speaker 2: Two old people are watching Twitch. Interestingly, Our largest demographic
Speaker 2: now is twenty five to thirty four. Okay, and I
Speaker 2: should have gotten I meant to check to see what
Speaker 2: percentage or our viewership is fifty plus and I forgot
Speaker 2: to do that. But it's surprising when I see what percentage.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's five to seven percent. In fact, actually,
Speaker 2: while we're sitting here, maybe I'll ping someone on that.
Speaker 2: So here's the way I would describe it. I don't
Speaker 2: think there are a ton of old people linked to
Speaker 2: twitch having never watched twitch. Okay, uh and now for
Speaker 2: the first time they're watching Twitch at sixty and the
Speaker 2: certainly that happens, but I wouldn't say that's the prime demographic.
Speaker 2: What's happening is people are aging up. Okay, so you
Speaker 2: know gaming has been around for a while now, so
Speaker 2: and as people as opposed to aging out of Twitch,
Speaker 2: you don't age out of Twitch. Is maybe the simplest
Speaker 2: way to say it. Okay, it may be with snap
Speaker 2: after you get to a certain age, you age out.
Speaker 2: With Twitch, what we see is, you know, we get
Speaker 2: a lot of usage from still people in their thirties
Speaker 2: and upper thirties and now they may have been using
Speaker 2: it for five or ten years.
Speaker 1: Let's use someone you may be familiar with and you
Speaker 1: can translate it to other people. But it's music. There's
Speaker 1: this guy, Rick Biado. You know who that is.
Speaker 2: I know the name. Let me check, well, Rick.
Speaker 1: Biato has a presence on you too.
Speaker 2: I recognize the face. Yeah, I know that, I know
Speaker 2: Rick Beata.
Speaker 1: Now it has It was first just him analyzing music
Speaker 1: saying thing. Now it is interviews with more famous musicians
Speaker 1: about their music how they're literally making.
Speaker 2: It yep, yep.
Speaker 1: He is making multiple seven figures from YouTube and his
Speaker 1: videos are not brief. Could he make as much money?
Speaker 1: What would be the advantage of going to twitch for
Speaker 1: someone like him?
Speaker 2: Yeah, here's the way. If I were talking to him,
Speaker 2: I'd say, don't think of it it's either or okay,
Speaker 2: think of it as d It's absolutely the case that
Speaker 2: VOD allows you to reach a broader audience because when
Speaker 2: you go live, not everybody can show up whenever you
Speaker 2: are live, okay, And so you're just going to reach
Speaker 2: more people when you create BOD content. The advantage of
Speaker 2: doing it live is if you like the idea including
Speaker 2: your audience and community while you're creating content. So I'll
Speaker 2: use as an example what we are doing right now, Bob. Okay,
Speaker 2: how would it be different if we were doing this live? Okay?
Speaker 2: The way it'd be different and'd be doing it live
Speaker 2: is chat would be going and you might be keeping
Speaker 2: an eye on chat, right and then at some point
Speaker 2: I will say something that you aren't an expert in.
Speaker 2: So when I say something, you don't know about something,
Speaker 2: and someone in chat would say something and you say, oh, Dan,
Speaker 2: chat said what about so and so?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And then I'd say, oh, what about so and so right?
Speaker 2: And so if you take someone like Rick, okay, if
Speaker 2: there and by the way, again, live may not be
Speaker 2: for everyone, but Rick is a perfect example. Okay. Lots
Speaker 2: of his audience has lots of opinions okay about whatever artists,
Speaker 2: and they have passionate about their artists, and they have
Speaker 2: questions for the artists, and they have ideas okay, and
Speaker 2: views on music that they want to feel part of it. Right.
Speaker 2: If I were Rick, I would think about saying, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm going to do these these recordings. I'm going to
Speaker 2: do them live. I'm gonna do you know how we
Speaker 2: said you can do subscriber only chat. If I was Rick,
Speaker 2: I'd probably do subscriber only chat because he's a bigger name,
Speaker 2: a little more prominent. Okay, So then he's gonna say, oh,
Speaker 2: you want to go ahead and chat during this, okay,
Speaker 2: and ask me questions and have me Okay, here's how
Speaker 2: you can do it, okay. There's also features where sometimes
Speaker 2: people say, oh, I can only I can make it
Speaker 2: so that anyone can chat, but I only look at
Speaker 2: the subscriber's chat, if you will, so me as a creator,
Speaker 2: so you can chat with each other, but I the creator,
Speaker 2: only see the subscriber chat, so the subscribers know. And
Speaker 2: then so in addition to the money he makes from YouTube, okay,
Speaker 2: now he's also making money from Twitch, which is you know, additive.
Speaker 2: And the biggest thing is he's getting a closer connection,
Speaker 2: which is fan base that in fact, there's a little
Speaker 2: more intimacy with those people that like him because they
Speaker 2: feel a little more connected with them. And if I
Speaker 2: were him, I would even say, okay, look and at
Speaker 2: the end of the end of what I am doing
Speaker 2: for the vod that I'm going to put out and
Speaker 2: distribute to all these people, I'm going to send fifteen minutes.
Speaker 2: Where so, for example, I recently started doing a podcast,
Speaker 2: a live podcast where basically I do it on stream.
Speaker 2: At the end of the podcast, I interview someone, then
Speaker 2: I turn it off the podcast and now I just
Speaker 2: talk with chat for a little while right about what
Speaker 2: we talked about, any issues and these are this is
Speaker 2: in a very off the cup fashion, Okay, and then
Speaker 2: that creates this connection with your fan base, right, and
Speaker 2: a lot of times it's a source of short form content.
Speaker 1: Okay, there are people once they gather fans, they have
Speaker 1: a fan base, they want to monetize that, live performances, etc.
Speaker 1: Forgetting that, if you have someone who is making seven
Speaker 1: figures from video only on YouTube, and I know we're
Speaker 1: talking completely in the abstract, they might be building community
Speaker 1: on Twitch, but can they make anywhere near that kind
Speaker 1: of money?
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, let's since it's not substitutional as
Speaker 2: opposed to saying can they make anywhere near that type?
Speaker 2: First of all, the answer is yes, they can make
Speaker 2: that near type of money. But the right the simple
Speaker 2: answer is yes, sympatically yes, Okay, But the real question is,
Speaker 2: let's assume they're making seven figures, can they make an
Speaker 2: additional fifty from Twitch? Well, in additional, if you if
Speaker 2: you got a fifty percent raise prop you're pretty excited.
Speaker 2: If it's not half again as much work, okay, so
Speaker 2: so absolutely. And then also the other factor is it
Speaker 2: can create this loyalty in your fan base. I'm going
Speaker 2: to make an analogy to music that I'd love to
Speaker 2: go into it at some point with you. This this
Speaker 2: emotional connection between a creator and an artist, and of
Speaker 2: course a musician is a creator okay, and their audience Okay,
Speaker 2: And how much in music now the connection is a
Speaker 2: little more with the platform rather than the artist. And
Speaker 2: in part the interesting analogy is I think music has
Speaker 2: gone more towards short form content because the single on
Speaker 2: Spotify is basically short form content. The album was long
Speaker 2: form content. And I'm sure you love listening to albums,
Speaker 2: and the more I listen or even if you again,
Speaker 2: whether you listen to the physical album or the artifact,
Speaker 2: when you listen to a piece of work from a
Speaker 2: creator which is a long form content, you create a
Speaker 2: stronger emotional bond with that creator. And that's a huge
Speaker 2: part of music, and that's a huge part in the
Speaker 2: creator ecosystem as well.
Speaker 1: Okay, at this point in time, how many I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have a dividing line and people get pissed off of this.
Speaker 1: Their people who are cottage industry, Okay, they put songs
Speaker 1: on Spotify, they do a few house concers, God bless them, okay.
Speaker 1: And the other extreme, we have people who either have
Speaker 1: a I'll give three criteria. They could have a major
Speaker 1: labeled deal, they could be in the Spotify top fifty,
Speaker 1: and they could sell five thousand tickets in most markets
Speaker 1: forty markets. How many of those acts are on Twitch?
Speaker 2: This is i'd say, for those acts on Twitch, I
Speaker 2: can't give you an exact number, but I wouldn't say gobs. Okay,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say gobs of those now in rap and
Speaker 2: hip hop, it's probably larger than any other music venue
Speaker 2: because in rap and hip hop, more and more folks
Speaker 2: have been saying, oh, I need to be using Twitch, okay.
Speaker 2: And so now streams all the time. Ti Dollar Sign
Speaker 2: streams regularly like they'll stream thirty hours a week. Actually
Speaker 2: Snoop Dogg streams regularly now too. But so in rap
Speaker 2: and hip hop, it's becoming more commonplace. Outside and rap
Speaker 2: and hip hop, I think most of them, I'd say,
Speaker 2: don't use Twitch as a primary channel as a musician, Okay.
Speaker 1: In the music business, we see these amazing numbers historically
Speaker 1: for concerts on Twitch.
Speaker 2: Massive.
Speaker 1: Tell us about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the way I describe that is you get
Speaker 2: these massive numbers for concert. Amazon Music does a number,
Speaker 2: Bad Bunny did a massive concert on Amazon Music. Okay,
Speaker 2: and so that is absolutely a thing, right, big concert
Speaker 2: on Twitch, And there are lots of folks that Again
Speaker 2: Amazon Music is the most notable, but a lot of
Speaker 2: you know, folks that are putting on concerts use Twitch
Speaker 2: to reach a big audience. And of course that's something
Speaker 2: I'm I love, I'm excited about. I like as I
Speaker 2: talk to musicians as they think about what they're doing.
Speaker 2: I think of the one of the things that is
Speaker 2: evolving is just putting a concert on Twitch when you're live.
Speaker 2: It is nice, but it's not so it's certainly not
Speaker 2: as good as being at the physical event, and it's
Speaker 2: not so much better than watching the same thing on
Speaker 2: bod a day later on YouTube. Right, you have to
Speaker 2: create this experience of why does it matter being live?
Speaker 2: And it's not to criticize those things, okay, but I
Speaker 2: don't think that is the way to think about live
Speaker 2: if you're a musician, Okay, as the prime In fact,
Speaker 2: that's what happened at during COVID. Of course you couldn't perform,
Speaker 2: and so there's a lot I'm gonna go live, right,
Speaker 2: And all it was doing was taking the same artifact
Speaker 2: that you create in a live concert and bringing to Twitch. Okay.
Speaker 2: And what is more interesting now is as you start
Speaker 2: thinking of adapting what you're creating for the for the
Speaker 2: live experience, and I think that is engaging with the
Speaker 2: audience more as opposed to just putting a concert up
Speaker 2: on Twitch.
Speaker 1: Okay. Twitch made investments in music, trying to grow its
Speaker 1: music footprint, and then is pulled back from that. Can
Speaker 1: you tell us about that experience?
Speaker 2: Yeah? In fact, that's at the time what they did
Speaker 2: was basically pay folks to often put their music on Twitch, right,
Speaker 2: if you will. The thing that I'm saying what they
Speaker 2: were doing was investing in that.
Speaker 1: Well wait, wait, so we're basically saying they your predecessor,
Speaker 1: not you. Who do you mean by they?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, they they We? I should say we, but
Speaker 2: it was I was not in charge. I was not
Speaker 2: the same at the time, but it's still we. I
Speaker 2: was still here at the time, so I should say we.
Speaker 2: That's fair. That was that was a mistake we and
Speaker 2: what we learned was that was not Sometimes what we
Speaker 2: were doing was saying, if you will, you have this
Speaker 2: idea of a loss leader, pay for something where you
Speaker 2: lose money. But that's okay. It's going to grow the service, okay,
Speaker 2: So we would pay, but it didn't end up growing
Speaker 2: the service because if you were coming just to watch
Speaker 2: this concert, that didn't mean you'd come back the next
Speaker 2: day for everything else, okay. And what we realized was
Speaker 2: we needed more organic growth than music and this has
Speaker 2: been this actually has been working. Again what I've been
Speaker 2: saying recently, there was a Rolling Stones article saying, you know,
Speaker 2: if you're looking to break into song and rap and
Speaker 2: hip hop, you're thinking about how to use Twitch, Okay,
Speaker 2: And that's because that's grown much more organically than us
Speaker 2: just going and recruiting people.
Speaker 1: You're talking to me, But to what degree are you
Speaker 1: or the company evangelizing amongst artists and record companies?
Speaker 2: Yeah, a big deal. So one reason I was excited
Speaker 2: to come on is we started We've had deals with
Speaker 2: all the major music labels now for a while and
Speaker 2: also the indies, although it's over the last two years
Speaker 2: year and a half that they've really been leaning in
Speaker 2: because they are starting to see the potential of using
Speaker 2: Twitch as part of what they were doing. And I
Speaker 2: think the biggest thing that they and we needed to realize.
Speaker 2: Initially they looked at Twitch because of course, the labels
Speaker 2: are all looking for discovery, and they look for Twitch
Speaker 2: for discovery. And the reality is short form is better
Speaker 2: for discovery, okay. And what they've realized is really Twitch
Speaker 2: is much better for maintaining your community and your audience
Speaker 2: once you build it. So the comparison, I'll make the
Speaker 2: old model used to be, write an album, record it,
Speaker 2: release the album on tour, and then disappear for a
Speaker 2: year and a half while you create your next album. Okay.
Speaker 2: In today's world, you can't disappear for a year and
Speaker 2: a half. Okay. You need to stay top of mind.
Speaker 2: That's why many people now are just constantly releasing songs.
Speaker 2: The album is an artifact, is dissipated because of the
Speaker 2: nature of these streaming services. Okay, because you have to
Speaker 2: stay top of mind. So how do you stay top
Speaker 2: of mind? Well, one thing is everyone's telling you to
Speaker 2: create short form content. If you're a musician, it's like,
Speaker 2: oh god, I don't want to create short form content.
Speaker 2: That's another thing I have to do. What I often
Speaker 2: tell him is go ahead and stream. Do something you
Speaker 2: enjoy doing. Kane Brown he gains when he streams because
Speaker 2: he likes to gain that's what he does when he streams. Okay,
Speaker 2: Bieber was streaming recently, spending a lot of time and
Speaker 2: he was playing basketball and doing all sorts of things. Okay.
Speaker 2: What I and as I said, a lot of musicians,
Speaker 2: Tee Paint has been streaming since twenty sixteen and he'll
Speaker 2: mix his next album on twitch. Okay. So what I
Speaker 2: say is find something you like doing, okay, And this
Speaker 2: is to engage your core audience. And if you're doing
Speaker 2: something you enjoy doing that connects you with your community,
Speaker 2: then from that you can create short form social media.
Speaker 2: So it's not just about what you do on Twitch.
Speaker 2: It's also about how whatever you do on Twitch can
Speaker 2: become short forms so you maintain stop of mind and
Speaker 2: you don't disappear for that year and a half, which
Speaker 2: you just can't do anymore. And the labels realize that's
Speaker 2: important for them for building an audience. So there's a
Speaker 2: lot more interest to what degree are re evangelizing. I'd
Speaker 2: say a fair amount. That's you know why I was
Speaker 2: down in LA when we met each other, because I
Speaker 2: was down talking to you know, labels and artists, and
Speaker 2: you know, I'm going to Nashville and April I'm gonna
Speaker 2: be talking to some folks and we others. We have
Speaker 2: a team that's designed to bring people to onboard them.
Speaker 2: So that way, if you are, if you are a influencer, creator,
Speaker 2: musician that already has some type of a following, we
Speaker 2: have a team that helps you get started on Twitch,
Speaker 2: accelerates you to the rev share that we talked about earlier,
Speaker 2: so that way you can get going, and then also
Speaker 2: connects you with other creators so that way we can
Speaker 2: help to encourage this usage.
Speaker 1: Okay, Originally every act needed a website, Then they needed
Speaker 1: to be on Wikipedia, then they needed to be on
Speaker 1: Facebook than Twitter. Now, of course X and people talk
Speaker 1: about TikTok. Why doesn't every musician have an account and
Speaker 1: stream some at Twitch.
Speaker 2: I think it would be good for every musician to
Speaker 2: do it. I will tell you the ones that are
Speaker 2: more naturally doing it tends to be a little more
Speaker 2: of the young ones because if you grew up in
Speaker 2: a given model of the music scene. But let me
Speaker 2: tell you why some shouldn't. First second, Okay, as opposed
Speaker 2: to arguing that everyone should, let me tell you why
Speaker 2: some shouldn't. For some artists, you create a mystique, you
Speaker 2: create a character. So I'll pick one as an example,
Speaker 2: Lady Gotgat, Right, Lady gog Got is this amazing character
Speaker 2: right that she's created, And I don't know if it's
Speaker 2: the right thing to lift the veil on that character.
Speaker 2: Okay that sometimes that's actually a great thing. Okay, other
Speaker 2: artists are not as such. Right. For example, it's absolutely
Speaker 2: the case that rap and hip hop there's much more
Speaker 2: of an intimacy and immediacy, but the same in country music,
Speaker 2: the same in lots of music, where there's more of
Speaker 2: this kind of authenticity, this connection all that. So I
Speaker 2: don't think every artist wants to lower the veil and
Speaker 2: like just kind of have the rawness that happens in line,
Speaker 2: but I think for many artists. So one reason is
Speaker 2: for some artists, if I say this to a label, like,
Speaker 2: if you're an artist and you like them more as
Speaker 2: you get to know them more, they're a great person
Speaker 2: for twitch because their audience are going to like them
Speaker 2: more as they get to know them more. Okay, because
Speaker 2: you can't hide yourself when you're live, you can't you know,
Speaker 2: create We all know that part of what happens is
Speaker 2: we create these images that is not exactly who we are,
Speaker 2: and you can't keep that up when you're when you're live.
Speaker 2: So I think for those artists where they're kind of
Speaker 2: authentic and intimacy and they want that authenticity with their
Speaker 2: with their audience as long as they enjoy it, they
Speaker 2: should absolutely be live stream.
Speaker 1: Well, going back to your Lady Gaga example, mystery is
Speaker 1: pretty much history in the music business because you can
Speaker 1: find out anything about everybody, et cetera. There is hang
Speaker 1: over in the music business. People don't like the remuneration
Speaker 1: for recorded music has changed formula. People say, oh, in
Speaker 1: physical product era, et cetera, we're not going back to that.
Speaker 2: Okay, doesn't matter what album Sturgel Simpson releases.
Speaker 1: The other thing is, especially today now more than ever,
Speaker 1: the artists are very money focused and they want to
Speaker 1: sell board tickets. Needless to say, someone like Kim Kardashian
Speaker 1: is making more money than other than maybe Taylor Swift. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I don't get the disc This is just my opinion.
Speaker 1: Twitch still has a exoticism to it. It's still an
Speaker 1: island offshore. When you know, you get a lot of musicians,
Speaker 1: you know, they think they have to create something snappy
Speaker 1: for short form video content, and then most of them,
Speaker 1: which is just horrible. They let some team do it,
Speaker 1: which is worthless, right, Okay, I just don't understand why
Speaker 1: everybody isn't on Twitch. There's a communication.
Speaker 2: Look, I don't disagree, I think Look, I completely agree.
Speaker 2: I do think that with short form content, we've been
Speaker 2: used to this radical change in the industry, right because
Speaker 2: TikTok and just bam it explodes, right, Okay, I don't
Speaker 2: think the world changes as quick when it comes to
Speaker 2: longer form, more intimate connection, because it's not like just
Speaker 2: show up and suddenly you get success. Okay, So I've
Speaker 2: seen a massive I will use a comparison. Okay, if
Speaker 2: I was at if I went to the different parties
Speaker 2: the week before the Grammys, uh two years ago, and
Speaker 2: I got introduced, I bet you if you and I
Speaker 2: we you know David masseyas if two years ago we
Speaker 2: were at the same event and David introduced me, you
Speaker 2: wouldn't have been like, oh actually.
Speaker 1: I would have. But I understand the concept.
Speaker 2: May you may have you may have end Okay, But
Speaker 2: and I will tell you the number of times that
Speaker 2: I'm out there and someone here is I'm the CEO
Speaker 2: of Twitch they're like, oh, I need to talk to
Speaker 2: you now, okay, And that is markedly different than two
Speaker 2: years ago or even one year ago. Literally almost I
Speaker 2: would say, it's like eighty percent of the people that
Speaker 2: someone introduced me to somebody, to an artist, to an agent,
Speaker 2: to someone down there. And the same thing was true
Speaker 2: when I was at the Super Bowl. Eighty percent of
Speaker 2: the times I met someone would say oh, like they
Speaker 2: would peer cup and says, oh, I need to talk
Speaker 2: to you okay, because I need to understand. So this
Speaker 2: is happening now. But the reality is it just takes time.
Speaker 2: It just takes time. And every you know, every two months.
Speaker 2: You know, this year at the grammyspread again in Septa
Speaker 2: and blackwa Max were nominated for Grammy first song they
Speaker 2: wrote on Twitch, Right, that creates more attention, more attension
Speaker 2: builds more attention. But it just takes time.
Speaker 1: Okay. The NBA was the first league to go to Twitter.
Speaker 1: It lived on Twitter. And as you say, the lifestyle
Speaker 1: and lives of hip hop artists, that is one of
Speaker 1: the way you promote the so called air quote brand
Speaker 1: other artists they're not used to this. Is it a
Speaker 1: matter of getting Okay, Well, we talk about software. We
Speaker 1: talk about, Oh, we're talking about killer rap for a platform.
Speaker 1: Is it a matter of Twitch, of getting some specific
Speaker 1: artist who is not in that vertical of hip hop
Speaker 1: or pop to come have a presence on Twitch?
Speaker 2: Is that what's gonna take? I think what is what happens?
Speaker 2: Is it sort of it sort of builds. But yes,
Speaker 2: I think it is somebody starting to do it. I mean,
Speaker 2: like Bieber did it, and now a lot of folks
Speaker 2: because Bieber did a lot, more people like, oh maybe
Speaker 2: I just should do that. Maybe and Bieber really, you know.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stop. I'm gonna stop your second Okay. Unlike
Speaker 1: when I was growning up, everything is niche. Even Taylor
Speaker 1: Swift is niche. Bieber very big artist, but the vast
Speaker 1: majority of the public could give a shit, Okay, So
Speaker 1: therefore Jason is Bell, Chris Stapleton. Yeah, their fans tend
Speaker 1: not to be Bieber fians. I'm not gonna go through
Speaker 1: each one. I don't think Don Henley will do.
Speaker 2: It, but I agree, I agree. This is what i'd say.
Speaker 2: And let's focus in the And I don't know about
Speaker 2: your views on the Americana label, so I'll say the
Speaker 2: Americana and country label. I don't know your views on
Speaker 2: that right that label, which I'm sure they're strong. I
Speaker 2: actually think that's In fact, it's one reason why I'm
Speaker 2: going to Nashville and April. I think it's an extremely
Speaker 2: well suited genre. Okay. I do think it's gonna need one, two, three,
Speaker 2: four that start doing it to kind of show people
Speaker 2: what what you do on there. Okay. And I don't
Speaker 2: think in that genre it's quite, but it's gonna be.
Speaker 2: You know, a few people start doing it and then
Speaker 2: it's like, oh wow, this is great. Now, I will
Speaker 2: say this in terms of who is the right person. Okay,
Speaker 2: this is going to make my point that not everyone
Speaker 2: is live the right format for them. I'll use an
Speaker 2: example of someone that of probably my favorite group out
Speaker 2: there is Turnpike Troubadors. Okay. Having met Evan Falker once,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure he would enjoy going live. I think
Speaker 2: it would be work for him. Okay. And so if
Speaker 2: it's worked for you to be there in front of
Speaker 2: the camera like off the cuff, then life may not
Speaker 2: be this. So it's not universal.
Speaker 1: It's I understand your point, you know, I've come actually
Speaker 1: coming more to your defense the music world has changed.
Speaker 1: It's as simple as people. You know, people were songwriters.
Speaker 1: If they had a song on an album, they made
Speaker 1: as much money as they made on the hit other
Speaker 1: than and for radio airplay, etc. Yes, people want to
Speaker 1: go back to that era. It's never come exactly. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't agree more okay. So we have these artists
Speaker 1: who say I am a songwriter a musician, only most
Speaker 1: of them tend to be older or tend to be
Speaker 1: in genres that don't generate.
Speaker 2: Also, by the way, tend to be established, because you
Speaker 2: can be that when you are established as a songwriter.
Speaker 1: You know, listen, I hear from these people all day long.
Speaker 1: If you're selling out arenas, there's basically no issue. The
Speaker 1: next step above that is stadiums. It's people who had
Speaker 1: success in the old era.
Speaker 2: Oh that's fair, or they and they're not anymore now.
Speaker 2: They're maybe on an old tour like a right it
Speaker 2: can start going tour.
Speaker 1: Their deals were keeping them alive even though the sales
Speaker 1: were not as high or the airplay was not as high.
Speaker 1: So I would pause it that what a musical artist
Speaker 1: today is not what it was before. Your identity and
Speaker 1: expressing yourself is part of the whole hate urbina using
Speaker 1: a holistic view of who you are.
Speaker 2: I completely agree. I'll take somebody who's past the point
Speaker 2: of doing it. But let's assume he were fifteen years
Speaker 2: younger or something like that. Okay, someone like Neil Diamond.
Speaker 2: To take someone you can imagine someone like him like
Speaker 2: really building a big audience, and you know, again he's
Speaker 2: the point now that he can't tour around. But I
Speaker 2: actually completely agree with you.
Speaker 1: Well, you know there are some people, some byn like
Speaker 1: Paul Anka who was on Yeah Bill Maher the other night.
Speaker 1: He's got a lot of personality, et cetera, Garth Brooks,
Speaker 1: As I say, is it a matter of getting with you?
Speaker 1: Is a matter of getting one of those people on.
Speaker 1: Let's just go sideways for a second. What I'm going
Speaker 1: to start streaming, not literally, but I'm gonna start streaming
Speaker 1: on twitch. What are the music rights issue? Can I
Speaker 1: play any music I watch?
Speaker 2: Let me go through. That's a great, that's great. So
Speaker 2: with music rights, first of all, let's go to you
Speaker 2: playing music, not recorded music. Okay. So we have the
Speaker 2: publishing rights for live for the live performance of the music. Okay,
Speaker 2: So when I stream, I do cover songs. We have
Speaker 2: all those rights, no issue. Okay, if you're playing recorded music. Okay.
Speaker 2: If you're playing recorded music, okay. So we have an
Speaker 2: agreement with the labels that is opposed to having to
Speaker 2: issue a DMCA. They notify us if somebody is playing
Speaker 2: recorded music that they have a concern with, So that
Speaker 2: way we can notify them and it doesn't have to
Speaker 2: go through the DMCA. Okay. In general, right now, the
Speaker 2: labels aren't so concerned. Now, let me go through a
Speaker 2: category where we have do full rights for if you're
Speaker 2: a DJ, or let's assume for a second somebody wanted
Speaker 2: to do a radio show. Okay, we do have the
Speaker 2: ability for you to get full rights for the catalog
Speaker 2: to play them while you're streaming. Okay, it's under particular
Speaker 2: deal that we have that the labels. Now, a portion
Speaker 2: of your revenue get shared with the labels. Okay. So
Speaker 2: if what you want to do is sit on and
Speaker 2: play recorded music and that's what your creative expression is, okay,
Speaker 2: you can do that. You just have to sign up.
Speaker 2: It's a DJ deal. But you don't have to be
Speaker 2: doing dance music for the DJ deal. Right If I
Speaker 2: want to play all.
Speaker 1: So if I'm saying I was driving down the street
Speaker 1: and I heard this amazing record I'm playing for you. Now,
Speaker 1: there's not really a deal for that. The label could
Speaker 1: come and say, hey, you know, can't do.
Speaker 2: That, right, but the labels as long as you're not
Speaker 2: abusing and like you know and others trying.
Speaker 1: To wait, let's not talk reality because there are many
Speaker 1: people see this promotional and then there are certain artists
Speaker 1: who clamp down no matter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, okay, we did not, but we we have.
Speaker 2: We have an agreement where as opposed to need to
Speaker 2: do DM. The labels can come and work with us.
Speaker 1: So why don't you have an overall agreement for the recordings.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the primary way that people end up
Speaker 2: with music on their stream. Okay, the primary mean isn't
Speaker 2: is what you kind of said, where music is just
Speaker 2: sort of in the background. They're gaming and there's some
Speaker 2: music playing in the background. Okay, it is not a
Speaker 2: significant portion of their creative expression, which is different from
Speaker 2: actually a DJ. A DJ to music is a significant
Speaker 2: portion of their creative expression. And so getting the right
Speaker 2: deal where in terms of what the REV share split
Speaker 2: would be when it's not a significant portion, it's just
Speaker 2: complicated and hasn't been very simple because in general, the
Speaker 2: labels are used to dealing where the music is a
Speaker 2: significant portion of the creative expression, which is exactly why
Speaker 2: we did the DJ deal. Okay, but if it's in
Speaker 2: the background, that's we have an agreement that this is
Speaker 2: an issue. They notify us and so we don't encourage it.
Speaker 2: But it would be difficult to get the right revenue
Speaker 2: share split for something like that.
Speaker 1: Okay, how did you end up as the CEO of Twitch?
Speaker 2: It's an interesting route. I will go back. Actually, when
Speaker 2: I was in undergrad I was actually a computer science
Speaker 2: and theater major.
Speaker 1: And so if we're going back to the beginning, where
Speaker 1: did you grow up?
Speaker 2: I grew up in New Orleans.
Speaker 1: And what did your parents do for a living?
Speaker 2: My dad was sort of in consulting type of stuff.
Speaker 2: He had been an engineer and then he did some consulting.
Speaker 2: And my mom raised seven kids and also was heavily
Speaker 2: involved in politics too.
Speaker 1: Except where are you in the hierarchy?
Speaker 2: I'm the well, I'm the second oldest, but my dad
Speaker 2: died before I was born. Actually, my dad was flying
Speaker 2: home to see my mom on Father's Day, and you know,
Speaker 2: you plane that he was flying assessminent type thing, any crash.
Speaker 2: And then my mom remarried and I have five younger
Speaker 2: brothers and sisters, and so yeah, I'm one of the
Speaker 2: older ones.
Speaker 1: Okay, you are as I say, I'm self editing, because
Speaker 1: people have such reactions to these terms, like successful, you
Speaker 1: are very successful. What happened to the other six?
Speaker 2: Ally? My brother, Well, that actually is one of the
Speaker 2: stories I was gonna tell, because there's a whole different
Speaker 2: world where I became a creative So my brother. I
Speaker 2: have one brother who runs a theater in New York
Speaker 2: called The Drilling Company, and he's been an actor and
Speaker 2: you know, trying to make ends meet as an actor
Speaker 2: his whole life. He's one year older than me. I
Speaker 2: have a sister who still does a lot of acting
Speaker 2: and performance. I have another brother different last name than me.
Speaker 2: By the way, my younger siblings have different last names.
Speaker 2: Who's the CEO of the Fred Rogers Company, which is
Speaker 2: very much a you know, part of that creative bank, right,
Speaker 2: so you know, in different things. And his sister lives
Speaker 2: in North Carolina. Another sister who's a lawyer that lives
Speaker 2: in Colorado, so sort of across the board mishmash your father.
Speaker 1: You literally not knowing your father to what degree? Is
Speaker 1: there an emotional hangover there and you have to work
Speaker 1: that through.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The interesting thing was since I grew up in
Speaker 2: my mind having a father, right because when I went
Speaker 2: my mom was remarried by the time I was two
Speaker 2: and a half, right, Okay, So in my mind I
Speaker 2: have had a father and he's been a wonderful father.
Speaker 2: He's cared for me everything, So I don't have this
Speaker 2: hangover from when I was young, if you will. The
Speaker 2: interesting part is you I have had to find out
Speaker 2: more about who I am because biologically I'm very different
Speaker 2: than the father who raised me. Okay, my birth father,
Speaker 2: he's Irish. He has a brother that lives in New
Speaker 2: York who's a sculptor, who's the only member of his
Speaker 2: family that I've had a connection to. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of similarities from talking to my uncle about me and
Speaker 2: my birth father. My mom actually didn't talk about my
Speaker 2: birth father almost at all when I was growing up
Speaker 2: because the emotional trauma of losing him when she had,
Speaker 2: you know, one baby and another one on the way,
Speaker 2: and she was only like a month pregnant with me
Speaker 2: when he died, and so nobody knew that she was
Speaker 2: pregnant when she got the news that he had passed away.
Speaker 2: That so she just couldn't deal with it, so she
Speaker 2: wouldn't talk about my dad at all. So it's only
Speaker 2: as I've gotten older that I've gotten to know my
Speaker 2: father by talking to my uncle, by doing all sorts
Speaker 2: of things. So it's more and then I find out
Speaker 2: things about myself that I realize, huh, that's probably that's
Speaker 2: you know, that's part of my father that is still
Speaker 2: in me somewhere. But it's not that I have like
Speaker 2: any baggage from not having a father. It's more this
Speaker 2: interesting exploration of finding out who this person was.
Speaker 1: Do you go to public school or private school?
Speaker 2: I went to public school until fifth grade, and then
Speaker 2: I went to in New Orleans, most people go to
Speaker 2: all boys or all female Catholic schools. So I went
Speaker 2: to an all male Catholic school through fifth through eighth
Speaker 2: grade and then in high school.
Speaker 1: To what degree? Did that indoctrination fuck you up?
Speaker 2: So? New Orleans is like seventy percent Catholic, okay, And
Speaker 2: you know, I'd like to think it didn't. I've been
Speaker 2: able to handle it well I have a very healthy
Speaker 2: attitude towards all that. It is funny, I've been thinking
Speaker 2: about that lately. Where I am. I do not practice
Speaker 2: catholow Simmary religion. And I always think, you know, if
Speaker 2: somebody is sharing the words of Jesus Christ, there's a
Speaker 2: lot to be learned there. Then there's a lot to
Speaker 2: be shared there. If they're preaching the Old Testament, I
Speaker 2: don't know, that's a different story. But so I have
Speaker 2: a very healthy attitude. I kind of went through this
Speaker 2: path or I have a very healthy attitude towards all
Speaker 2: the good things, even though there are lots of challenges too.
Speaker 1: So were you the smartest kid in the class?
Speaker 2: I did pretty well. But I will tell you one
Speaker 2: of those stories I love to tell. Interestingly, this relates
Speaker 2: to streaming. So one thing that I realized about a
Speaker 2: year ago. And my kids always told me they all
Speaker 2: identify as having ADHD. Okay, And they said, oh, Dad,
Speaker 2: we think you have ADHDM. It's like, what do you mean,
Speaker 2: I have a PhD in Ai. I went to Duke like,
Speaker 2: I did really well, I don't have ADHD. Like, okay,
Speaker 2: do you have ADHD? I said no, I don't. And
Speaker 2: then I read more about Adhd and then I realized,
Speaker 2: and I look back to my childhood and I realized,
Speaker 2: I'm a poster child Adhd. Okay on the spectrum, and
Speaker 2: in fact, this is one thing we can get back
Speaker 2: to this. Most streamers you find are because they have
Speaker 2: this superpower of their mind being able to process multiple
Speaker 2: things at once. But I tell this story because in
Speaker 2: fourth grade I was having trouble. I wasn't doing well
Speaker 2: in school. And then I went to fifth grade at
Speaker 2: this Christian Brothers all boys school and my parents had
Speaker 2: to talk my way in because I wasn't doing very
Speaker 2: well in fourth grade. My brother was already there and
Speaker 2: they had to push me to get into what was
Speaker 2: the better of the three classes with this guy, brother Gregory,
Speaker 2: and this teacher. The way he taught was he had
Speaker 2: something that he called good Marks where he gave out
Speaker 2: what basically were credits okay, And at the end of
Speaker 2: every week he had a Jeopardy game to learn the
Speaker 2: stuff you were supposed to learn that week, and you
Speaker 2: were quizzed on this stuff for that week, and if
Speaker 2: you won Jeopardy, you got ice cream to play football.
Speaker 2: Then you got good Marks, and at the end of
Speaker 2: the semester, you could spend the good marks on this
Speaker 2: this like, uh, everybody brought in their old toys and
Speaker 2: they bought you know, an exchange. Anyway, he gained a
Speaker 2: fied learning for me, and I went from being barely
Speaker 2: in there to be one of the top two or
Speaker 2: three kids in the class because he basically turned learning
Speaker 2: into a game, which was like a poster child of
Speaker 2: what you need to do for someone with ADHD. And
Speaker 2: then once I had the confidence that I was smart,
Speaker 2: because then I thought of myself as smart. So then
Speaker 2: I kept performing. But I needed to think of myself
Speaker 2: as smart. And the only way I thought of myself
Speaker 2: as smart is because I just happened to have this
Speaker 2: teacher at the perfect time that taught in a non
Speaker 2: traditional way. So yes, I was one of the top
Speaker 2: kids in the class, but it wasn't it was by
Speaker 2: chance that everything worked out for me.
Speaker 1: And where does the theater angle come from.
Speaker 2: My brother was into theater. I got into theater. And
Speaker 2: the only reason I mention it is because it's this
Speaker 2: interesting twist with twitch because when you ask about how
Speaker 2: did I get here, right, I've spent most of my career,
Speaker 2: all of my career in the technical space. After a duke,
Speaker 2: I worked in a technical capacity. Then I got a
Speaker 2: PhD in AI. Then I worked at NASA leading their
Speaker 2: autonomy and robotics group in AI. And then I was
Speaker 2: at Google and YouTube, and I was at a startup
Speaker 2: next door. So basically I've spent my whole life in
Speaker 2: a technical product and engineering role. Okay, but am I root?
Speaker 2: I'm really a creative and in a different world. If
Speaker 2: I were coming out today as opposed to using my
Speaker 2: mask skills, I could every much found myself being a creative.
Speaker 2: And I've also always been a music fan. I had
Speaker 2: a thousand albums. I taught myself to play the piano.
Speaker 2: So there's a different life where I didn't go technical
Speaker 2: and I did something in news are in creative expression.
Speaker 2: And the thing I love about Twitch is it is
Speaker 2: this perfect bringing together of these two sides of my
Speaker 2: life that I did not I could not have predicted.
Speaker 2: It brings together my sort of business product technical skills
Speaker 2: with my creative uh you know, DNA. That has always
Speaker 2: been a big part of who I am.
Speaker 1: Okay, AI is the buzz term of today, isn't it.
Speaker 1: What What was AI like when you were getting your degree?
Speaker 2: So interesting. A lot of what has become the foundation
Speaker 2: of AI was part of AI back then. Okay. The
Speaker 2: interesting thing that there is this battle back then between
Speaker 2: two approaches to AI. One was the symbolic AI that
Speaker 2: tried to represent things in the way we think about
Speaker 2: how we think, Okay, so they tried to explicitly represent
Speaker 2: information and all that. And then the other was statistical AI,
Speaker 2: where they just had all sorts of data and they
Speaker 2: learned these complex models, which a neural net is the
Speaker 2: foundation of. And back then there was this battle of
Speaker 2: which type of AI would win. By the time I graduated,
Speaker 2: it was clear who was going to win. Statistical AI
Speaker 2: was going to win, okay, and statistical AI has been
Speaker 2: the thing that has dominated Okay. But the interesting thing
Speaker 2: is a lot of what people talked about then we
Speaker 2: were talking about the world that now exists, but we
Speaker 2: could never deliver on that, and only now because of
Speaker 2: some algorithmic improvements, but also because of a massive amount
Speaker 2: of data combined with computing. If another way to say this,
Speaker 2: if the World Wide Web never occurred, we wouldn't be
Speaker 2: where we're at with AI. One of the reasons we're
Speaker 2: at with the AI is because this thing occurred, carled
Speaker 2: the World Wide Web, which creative these massive data sets,
Speaker 2: and these massive data sets then allowed the algorithms to
Speaker 2: work in ways that previously they could.
Speaker 1: Okay, did you literally have a PhD? There certain experts
Speaker 1: who say this is a dead end the way we're
Speaker 1: doing it. If it's gonna start talking about thinking like
Speaker 1: people were at least thirty years off, what's your take
Speaker 1: on that?
Speaker 2: So this, I mean, I'm gonna try to be shorten this.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: We think that people think very logically and rationally. Okay,
Speaker 2: but they don't. But they don't. I don't know. Have
Speaker 2: you ever read about the system one brain and the
Speaker 2: system to brain?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Okay, So all the research are your system one brain
Speaker 2: is your gut, your instincts, your intuition, all of that. Okay.
Speaker 2: Your system to brain is your reasoning and logic. Okay.
Speaker 2: All the evidence suggests that the primary usage of our
Speaker 2: system to brain are reasoning and logic is to come
Speaker 2: up with a plausible justification of the answer that pops
Speaker 2: into our head with our system one brain. As soon
Speaker 2: as you ask the question, okay, so what do you
Speaker 2: think about Sturgil Simpson releasing just an album and not
Speaker 2: an answer pops into your head. I think it's stupid.
Speaker 2: I think it's a great idea. Okay, then your system
Speaker 2: two brains explains that, and we think the reason we
Speaker 2: believe this is for all these good reasons, it's bullshit
Speaker 2: ninety five percent of the time. Which is one reason
Speaker 2: why we have the divide in the country we have
Speaker 2: is because you watch the same video to people's system,
Speaker 2: one brain tells them two different things, and then they
Speaker 2: try to justify. So the way humans think is through
Speaker 2: all this compiled thing, and so interestingly, that is the
Speaker 2: way AI is working now. So I actually think this
Speaker 2: idea that AI doesn't work the way humans brains thinks.
Speaker 2: I think it does work the way human brains thinks. Okay,
Speaker 2: I still think we are a long way. I think
Speaker 2: there is a vast misunderstanding of the complexity of human intelligence.
Speaker 2: I think that we think of the primary form of
Speaker 2: human intelligence as doing really hard math problems. Okay, But
Speaker 2: the really unique part about human intelligence is our ability
Speaker 2: to coordinate, cooperate, think about each other, you know, interact
Speaker 2: with each other. Okay, And that allows us to function
Speaker 2: as a unit. And I don't think AI has any
Speaker 2: data on that. So I believe that we keep projecting
Speaker 2: the advances in AI to continue like this, it's gonna
Speaker 2: asymptote okay. And I think this idea that AI will
Speaker 2: replace human beings, I think we still have a long
Speaker 2: way to go. And the people that like to tell
Speaker 2: you that are the ones that are trying to get
Speaker 2: lots of funding in AI. And also usually they're the
Speaker 2: math folks that tend to think the pinnacle of intelligence
Speaker 2: is doing hard maath, which I don't think the pinnacle
Speaker 2: of human intelligence is doing hard math. I think the
Speaker 2: pinnacle of human intelligence is all the complex interactions of
Speaker 2: humans doing all sorts of stuff with other humans.
Speaker 1: This is a really subsidiary point to your excellent delineation
Speaker 1: of the landscape. But math is one thing the present
Speaker 1: models hallucinate such that you know, I find mistakes all
Speaker 1: the time. Is that something that you feel can be
Speaker 1: conquered in the short.
Speaker 2: Term, the degree that it happens will be improved, Okay,
Speaker 2: But the short answer is so the egregious examples, yes,
Speaker 2: the non egregious examples are non And the problem comes
Speaker 2: in is AI is like that trend of yours who
Speaker 2: thinks they're an expert in everything okay, and they speak
Speaker 2: with such great authority that you actually think they are right.
Speaker 2: Oh yay, because they speak with such great authority that
Speaker 2: you think they know everything, and the reality is they're
Speaker 2: bullshitting you and they don't, and really you're being wrong.
Speaker 2: So like, I'm trying to fix this Watt bike I
Speaker 2: have that's like this exercise bike and it's not working.
Speaker 2: And I use AI and it talks with so much
Speaker 2: authority that I think that it knows exactly the problem,
Speaker 2: and actually it's taking me down dead end trail.
Speaker 3: Okay, but it is so confident, and I know that
Speaker 3: sometimes because I'll ask questions and then like sometimes I
Speaker 3: use ai'd ask questions about twitch stuff and they'll tell
Speaker 3: me an answer with absolute confidence.
Speaker 2: I'm like, they completely got this wrong, okay, but they
Speaker 2: misunderstood it. So I guess that it's the ones that
Speaker 2: are great fodder to put on a headline. I think
Speaker 2: we can solve that. The ones that we won't solve
Speaker 2: are these ones that you only know if you know
Speaker 2: something about the area and you know that it is
Speaker 2: bullshitting you.
Speaker 1: Okay. Even in the Washington Post today, certain financial people
Speaker 1: believe that the market is up. There's investment in AI companies,
Speaker 1: but in realay productivity has not increased whatsoever. Okay. In addition,
Speaker 1: having lived for a while, it's been constant reports to
Speaker 1: the paper, maybe the market's going to crash. Is this
Speaker 1: a winner take all business? There's so much investment in
Speaker 1: open AI that they could never make their money back.
Speaker 1: What's your take here?
Speaker 2: So two things can be true at once. AI can
Speaker 2: have a massive impact on the world we live in
Speaker 2: in the future, and it can be overhyped. Right now,
Speaker 2: I'd say both are almost certainly true. And in fact,
Speaker 2: anything that is going to have a massive impact on
Speaker 2: the world will almost certainly be overhyped because that is
Speaker 2: the very nature of the world we live in. Okay.
Speaker 2: So I guess this is what I'll say about this
Speaker 2: question of crash and all that. Right, If if what
Speaker 2: you're selling is a bill of goods where there's no
Speaker 2: there there, then you have to worry about a crash
Speaker 2: because you have a crash and now it's all vapor
Speaker 2: where it's gone, okay, as opposed to thinking of a crash.
Speaker 2: Our market always has corrections, that's the nature of the markets.
Speaker 2: So will there be corrections, Well, almost certainly, because people
Speaker 2: are making a lot of bets on a lot of things,
Speaker 2: and some of those bets, if some of those bets
Speaker 2: didn't work out, then people are being stupid in their
Speaker 2: investment because you're not going to be able to get
Speaker 2: all your bets right right, So there are gonna be
Speaker 2: some bets that don't work out where it's overhyped, and
Speaker 2: then there're gonna be some bets that actually end up,
Speaker 2: you know, being you know, hugely consequential. And I always say,
Speaker 2: anyone that tells you that they know which bets are
Speaker 2: going to pay out and which ones aren't, Okay, if
Speaker 2: they are so good, then they should stop what they're
Speaker 2: doing and just invest in the market and they'll be
Speaker 2: a gazillionaire because I'm sorry, nobody knows exactly which ones
Speaker 2: are going to work and which ones aren't. It just
Speaker 2: everyone likes to talk.
Speaker 1: And what about the issue of regulation and fear with AI?
Speaker 1: What's your take on that?
Speaker 2: So let me take one part of the fear off
Speaker 2: the table. There are those people worried about the AI
Speaker 2: taking over. Okay, I don't think you have to worry
Speaker 2: about the AI. You have to worry about the people
Speaker 2: controlling the AI. That's a universal truth about new technology
Speaker 2: that any new technology that is powerful in what it
Speaker 2: can do in a positive fashion is powerful, and what
Speaker 2: it can do in a negative fashion. All you have
Speaker 2: to do is go back to gunpowder and all that.
Speaker 2: Lots of positive things it can do, and lots of
Speaker 2: negative things can do. And what you have to worry
Speaker 2: about as who's holding the gun right And that's a
Speaker 2: you know, a part of your concern or whatever the
Speaker 2: weapon is that that came out of that. But a
Speaker 2: lot of that allowed us to do all sorts of
Speaker 2: things as well. Okay, so I don't believe this idea
Speaker 2: of AI taking over the world. I think that's just
Speaker 2: science fiction. Will negative things happen from AI? Almost certainly.
Speaker 2: That's the very nature of tech innovation. And in every
Speaker 2: tech innovation, you know, there have been bad things that
Speaker 2: have come from it. I do think you need to
Speaker 2: think about what some of those things are. My apprehension
Speaker 2: is figuring out an intervention that can fix a hypothetical threat.
Speaker 2: I will use a couple examples. Suppose back in the
Speaker 2: nineteen twenties someone explained to you global warming and what
Speaker 2: we're going to happen, and from the industrialization of the globe,
Speaker 2: what policies should they have put in place in the
Speaker 2: nineteen twenties to avoid global warming? Well, we can't even
Speaker 2: agree on a policy to deal with global warming today
Speaker 2: and we have all the science explaining it. So this
Speaker 2: idea in the twenties they could have figured out the
Speaker 2: policies to put in place to prevent global warming. Let's
Speaker 2: talk about social networking. Lots of great things with social networking.
Speaker 2: A lot of people have concerns about different things in
Speaker 2: terms of the division and all that. In two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight, could anyone have figured out interventions to prevent
Speaker 2: whatever you think are the negative impacts of social network
Speaker 2: The answer is no, nobody could have figured it out
Speaker 2: in two thousand and eight. And so the problem is
Speaker 2: the answer is and if you overconstrain it, all you're
Speaker 2: going to do is ensure that some other country wins
Speaker 2: because you can constrain it here, But that doesn't stop
Speaker 2: what's happening in that country or that country or that country.
Speaker 2: So I'm for me. I do think there needs to
Speaker 2: be awareness and regulation and consciousness. I think you have
Speaker 2: to be very careful of forecasting too far in the future. Instead,
Speaker 2: you have to be identifying where the issues are and
Speaker 2: being responsible.
Speaker 1: Okay, drilling down on something you just said. You essentially
Speaker 1: control a social network that is a virtual world. The
Speaker 1: internet is the best thing that ever happened to me.
Speaker 1: If you read the New York Times, which is the
Speaker 1: best we've got. They have reporters everywhere, but imperfect. You
Speaker 1: get a lot of self satisfied baby boomers. Put the
Speaker 1: phone down. I'm getting a flip phone. We have the
Speaker 1: Australia with the regulation where a certain age cannot be
Speaker 1: on the Internet now, not beyond social networks. There's been
Speaker 1: no study that's proven a deleterious effect. But this is
Speaker 1: literally your business. So what's your take?
Speaker 2: So lots of thoughts here. Let me talk about my
Speaker 2: personal belief. Okay, my personal belief. As you're growing up,
Speaker 2: the phone can be a challenging object when you're eleven, twelve,
Speaker 2: and thirteen. I avoided my kids having phones at that age. Okay,
Speaker 2: I picked my phone up more than I'd like. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm an adult. I know that I do think there
Speaker 2: are a lot of challenges in high school and all that,
Speaker 2: and so with my kids, I wanted them to be
Speaker 2: doing more interacting. So like my daughter's first phone, was
Speaker 2: a flip phone because I felt like that was the
Speaker 2: right thing. And I still feel like that is the
Speaker 2: right thing, because I do believe a lot's happening when
Speaker 2: you're thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen just going to school in
Speaker 2: a thousand person setting. That's not the way we evolved.
Speaker 2: When you think of our evolution biologically, were the same
Speaker 2: as the people ten thousand years ago, right, In terms
Speaker 2: of our genetics, we're not that different. Nobody grew up
Speaker 2: with one thousand classmates ten thousand years ago, right. They
Speaker 2: use mixed age, they were right, because it's in some
Speaker 2: type of tribe or clothes or whatever, and you're exposed
Speaker 2: to all sorts of things. So I think we already
Speaker 2: have this artificial environment where you pack all these kids
Speaker 2: of the same age together because it's efficient to teach,
Speaker 2: and then you throw in a phone. So now there's
Speaker 2: this kind of thing that you're always turning to and
Speaker 2: always putting in your hand, and that there's all sorts
Speaker 2: of stuff. So this isn't just about the phone, this
Speaker 2: is about other things. In terms of that, I think
Speaker 2: it's not optimal. So personally, I am a supporter of
Speaker 2: having control, but I also am a big believer in
Speaker 2: parents having choice. You know, I'm telling you my own
Speaker 2: personal my own personal choice as a parent. Okay, So
Speaker 2: I think there are some truths in the concerns that
Speaker 2: people are voicing there, But as you said, I can't
Speaker 2: tell you emphatically. I know that for sure it's a
Speaker 2: difficult question, but I make that personal choice. I do
Speaker 2: think that sometimes part of what's happening is there is
Speaker 2: there is this I will call demonization of different businesses.
Speaker 2: Big tech is doing this, Big tech is doing this,
Speaker 2: and really it's a vacuum where unfortunately we haven't created
Speaker 2: regulations and guidelines that we think are appropriate to in
Speaker 2: the world that we live in. Because in general, the
Speaker 2: very nature of capitalism is if this party doesn't do it,
Speaker 2: then this party will do it, right, That is the nature.
Speaker 2: So suppose, you know, Facebook decided Instagram wasn't a good
Speaker 2: thing for the world for whatever reason, Well, then someone
Speaker 2: would have invented TikTok even sooner.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: And then suppose TikTok decided it was, well, someone else
Speaker 2: would invent something right that would take its place. Okay,
Speaker 2: So whatever the challenges are, of which I think there
Speaker 2: are challenges, I think there's lots of challenges in how
Speaker 2: social media. You know, how we talked about the system
Speaker 2: one and system two brain. Okay, I think there are
Speaker 2: lots of challenges where it creates these micro thought groups
Speaker 2: where in general this one part I didn't say one
Speaker 2: with the system one is system to brain. How does
Speaker 2: your system one brain come up with the answer it
Speaker 2: gives you. Usually it's what other people they know and
Speaker 2: trust believe. That's how the system one brain comes up
Speaker 2: with the answer. So if you go back in time,
Speaker 2: if you hear a rustling in the in the in
Speaker 2: the in the bushes, and your brain says, you know, run,
Speaker 2: that could be a tiger. Okay, it's a it's a reaction, right,
Speaker 2: And why do you believe that? That's because the people
Speaker 2: that you live with says, oh, there's a rustling, move
Speaker 2: there's a tiger. You believe it because the people you
Speaker 2: spend time with believe it. And that's how we're evolved
Speaker 2: as social animals is we believe things because the people
Speaker 2: we spend time believe things, and that's how we program
Speaker 2: our system one brain. Well, of course, if all you're
Speaker 2: talking to are people with the same views, then it
Speaker 2: programs are system one to think homogeneously about it. Okay,
Speaker 2: So I think there are all these challenges that we have,
Speaker 2: but that doesn't mean the tech companies are to blame
Speaker 2: for it, algorithms to blame for it. All. An algorithm
Speaker 2: is trying to find you something that doesn't bore you
Speaker 2: to They send we have problems. We have to deal
Speaker 2: with those problems and figure out how to handle those problems,
Speaker 2: not blame it on the tech companies.
Speaker 1: Just because you went there twice. Now we live in
Speaker 1: a divided country. Everyone gets news from their own source.
Speaker 1: Is there any hope? And the hope would come in
Speaker 1: a number of levels that we could agree on certain
Speaker 1: facts that we can move forward or is it just
Speaker 1: going to become a tower of Babel society.
Speaker 2: I can't tell you what the answer is, but I'm
Speaker 2: actually a deep believer in the unending path towards greater
Speaker 2: compassion and you know, awareness and enlightenment, and so do
Speaker 2: I have hope. There's a great song. Don't are you
Speaker 2: familiar with Emily Scott Robinson? Okay, you she check her out.
Speaker 2: She's on Oh Boy Records. But but she has a song,
Speaker 2: a Time of Flowers, and she just came out of
Speaker 2: a new album that she just recorded, and she actually
Speaker 2: wrote it during COVID, But it's particularly appropriate now because
Speaker 2: it talks about, you know, even in hard times, there
Speaker 2: comes a time for flowers, okay, and that the flowers
Speaker 2: will bloom. And so I guess I am at my
Speaker 2: very base even as people always like to disparage about
Speaker 2: where the world is and say it's hopeless, And as
Speaker 2: you go back in time, I'm sure people were disparaged
Speaker 2: about the world and the way it was during World
Speaker 2: War Two and during all sorts of during the Great Depression,
Speaker 2: during all sorts of things, right, And so I'm a
Speaker 2: big believer that, yeah, we'll work through it.
Speaker 1: What did we do? Politics have a presence on Twitch.
Speaker 2: Uh, So it is. It is part of Twitch, Okay,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say it is. And there are a number
Speaker 2: of creators that are you know, noteworthy in terms of
Speaker 2: politics and talking about it. It's not you know, a
Speaker 2: huge percentage of Twitch. I do think it'll be interesting
Speaker 2: as the elections come up about when more politicians are
Speaker 2: gonna be leaning into using Twitch to sort of get
Speaker 2: their message out and engage. So it's a part, but
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say it's you know, a dominant portion of twitch.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about this career. You went to work
Speaker 1: for NASA. Why nasaid? How was that experience?
Speaker 2: The way I describe it is, I've been one of
Speaker 2: the I'm a big believer that so many people and
Speaker 2: I'm one of them they just we stare at our
Speaker 2: feet and take two steps forward with no idea where
Speaker 2: we're going. Okay, And I very much have lived my
Speaker 2: life making choices about things I want to do. So
Speaker 2: I got out of getting my PhD. And when I
Speaker 2: was getting my PhD, everyone told me, oh, you should
Speaker 2: be a researcher, because of course all my professors were researchers.
Speaker 2: And I knew I didn't want to go to academia.
Speaker 2: So I said, oh, but I want to be a researcher.
Speaker 2: So I looked at going to Microsoft, NASA, ISI, SRI
Speaker 2: Bell Labs. Those were the you know, research things at
Speaker 2: that time. I ended up choosing NASA. At the time,
Speaker 2: it was one of the better places to go for AI.
Speaker 2: When I got there and I was thinking, oh, I
Speaker 2: want to be a researcher. Within about four months I
Speaker 2: realized a big part of being a researcher is publishing
Speaker 2: papers and I realized I don't care about publishing papers.
Speaker 2: I liked SA problems. So I had to unlearn all
Speaker 2: this stuff that I learned in school and realized, no,
Speaker 2: I'm really a problem solved. And then I started managing.
Speaker 2: Within literally six months of getting to NASA. I went
Speaker 2: from kind of being an IC and I was leading
Speaker 2: a group of like two hundred and seventy people within
Speaker 2: three years of having shown up at the door at
Speaker 2: NASA after my PhD. And so it's a great time
Speaker 2: for me. I loved working at NASA. Really, what it
Speaker 2: was is I found out more about who I was
Speaker 2: and how much I liked to solve problems, more so
Speaker 2: than just getting rooted in the technology.
Speaker 1: So how get up switching to Google?
Speaker 2: So NASA AMES is in a Silicon valley. It's actually
Speaker 2: just across a canal from Google, and it was at
Speaker 2: a time when Google was growing. The guy who's one
Speaker 2: of the positions I took two ago, I got that
Speaker 2: one position, I went up another level. He had gone
Speaker 2: over to Google. And so like three years before I left,
Speaker 2: I thought about going to Google, and I knew I
Speaker 2: wanted to move on from now. I loved NASA, but
Speaker 2: I didn't grow up a space, you know, like a
Speaker 2: guy dream about space. As a computer science I was
Speaker 2: in Silicon Valley, so I was like, Okay, I've done
Speaker 2: a lot at NASA. I want to go into Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2: And Google was sort of a very natural choice. It
Speaker 2: took a while to make sure I got the position
Speaker 2: and all that, but then it was great going over
Speaker 2: to Google.
Speaker 1: And so why'd you leave Google?
Speaker 2: After I've been there about nine years? A lot of
Speaker 2: people stay at Google and they just stay there forever.
Speaker 2: And Google's very generous and how they compensate you and
Speaker 2: all that, and I reflected, and part of it is
Speaker 2: the way I've described it was, I have I've got
Speaker 2: to live in Rome during the Renaissance when you think
Speaker 2: of Silicon Valley in this time period. But there was
Speaker 2: a lot besides the Sistine Chapel during the Renaissance, and
Speaker 2: I see all this going on, and I felt like,
Speaker 2: if I ended my career having spent my whole career
Speaker 2: at Google, how would I feel about it? And I
Speaker 2: do think a lot of people get comfortable at Google.
Speaker 2: And I felt like and I was compensated well, and
Speaker 2: I felt like, no, but I can do other things.
Speaker 2: I don't need to stay at Google, and so I
Speaker 2: just felt that, but a lot of people don't make
Speaker 2: that choice, and I was like, I just don't want
Speaker 2: to spend my whole career at Google. So I went
Speaker 2: to a startup. The startup, next Door, ended up doing okay,
Speaker 2: but not like great. A lot of some people know it,
Speaker 2: and then I'll jump Interestingly, when I came to Twitch,
Speaker 2: I had left next Doors taking some time off. They
Speaker 2: interviewed me and they offered me the job, and I
Speaker 2: turned it down because I said, oh Twitch. I hadn't
Speaker 2: used Twitch a lot. I said, oh, Twitch is a
Speaker 2: gaming platform. I'm not a gamer. I don't think that's
Speaker 2: right for me. And then they came back four months
Speaker 2: later and said, no, Dan, we really think you're the
Speaker 2: right person for the job. And so I thought about
Speaker 2: it and I realized where I've been happiest in life
Speaker 2: is when I work with people I like, and I
Speaker 2: liked the people I was going to work with, so
Speaker 2: I said yes. And then it's only afterwards that I
Speaker 2: really realized that Twitch was a perfect fit. It was
Speaker 2: just happenstance that even though I wasn't a gamer, I
Speaker 2: only after being there realized, oh, Twitch is really about
Speaker 2: community and about creatives, and I was a creative and
Speaker 2: I'd done a lot in community, so it ended up
Speaker 2: being this sort of match made in heaven.
Speaker 1: Okay. Silicon Valley is the story of founders. There were
Speaker 1: you know, dropouts like Bill Gates. There are people completely uneducated,
Speaker 1: really liked Steve jobs. But they're all these and then
Speaker 1: you have the Google twins at Stanford, you were working
Speaker 1: for people. Did you ever say, wait a second, all
Speaker 1: these other people starting companies, I want to start a
Speaker 1: company too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at times I'd have that thought, right, And then
Speaker 2: what I realized is so some of those people have
Speaker 2: demonstrated an ability to do it multiple times. Not many,
Speaker 2: not many, even the good ones. A huge part is
Speaker 2: being in the right place at the right time. Okay,
Speaker 2: And I think I realized, well, I love the idea
Speaker 2: of starting something, and maybe I will be in the
Speaker 2: right place at the right time. I also was really good.
Speaker 2: It's taking something that already had some scale and coming
Speaker 2: in and approaching it with the same zeal and passion
Speaker 2: that a founder has. And to be honest, some of
Speaker 2: those people I don't think would have been good at it.
Speaker 2: In other words, they many of the people you talked
Speaker 2: about you couldn't have brought into Twitch when I was
Speaker 2: brought into Twitch, where they could have had the impact
Speaker 2: that I had at that point of Twitch, like either
Speaker 2: they had to found something or they weren't going to
Speaker 2: be able to do it. I realized that, Look, no,
Speaker 2: I was really good at kind of taking something that
Speaker 2: already had some traction and working to scale it and
Speaker 2: make it better. So I certainly reflected on it. But
Speaker 2: whenever I was faced with that decision, I always kind
Speaker 2: of said, where can I have the biggest impact That
Speaker 2: I often went to something that already had some traction.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're working for NASA, you're working for the Space program.
Speaker 1: You can only make so much money. The people at Google,
Speaker 1: depending on when they got in, whether that job they
Speaker 1: made a shit ton of money. Whatever's going on at Twitch.
Speaker 1: It's owned by Amazon, the upside is only so high.
Speaker 1: How have you done financially over your career?
Speaker 2: Yeah? The way it's funny, a lot of people they say, oh,
Speaker 2: he's the owner of Twitch. Like I go around and
Speaker 2: people recognize me and they're oh, he's the owner of Twitch,
Speaker 2: and so they think I'm a gazillionaire now I'm doing fine.
Speaker 2: I'm quite comfortable, Okay, But I'm not the owner of Twitch.
Speaker 2: I didn't found Twitch. I wasn't at Google, you know,
Speaker 2: pre IPI. Okay. But the way I describe it is,
Speaker 2: I think the tech industry people, we all, well all
Speaker 2: of us in the tech industry, get paid more than
Speaker 2: we deserve. We think we deserve so much more because
Speaker 2: we see somebody who is in the right place at
Speaker 2: the right time. And what I often say is this
Speaker 2: is a challenge. When you live in the area like
Speaker 2: the Bay Area, you think of your intellect and ability,
Speaker 2: and then you see other people there and you see
Speaker 2: ones that you look at and you say, well, wait,
Speaker 2: I'm better than them, and they happen to be somewhere,
Speaker 2: and so they're a gazillionaire, right, and so you feel
Speaker 2: like I deserve more. And so for the way I
Speaker 2: say it is for everyone that you see above you
Speaker 2: in terms of how much they've benefited, that you think
Speaker 2: you're just as good as there are probably ten people
Speaker 2: below you that are every bit as good as you,
Speaker 2: that did not benefit as much as you did. You
Speaker 2: just don't see those ten people and how good they are. Okay,
Speaker 2: So I've been incredibly blessed, right, And I am you know,
Speaker 2: I'm comfortable, my kids, you know, benefited, you know in
Speaker 2: terms of college and all that. I'm not a gazillionaire,
Speaker 2: but I don't care about being a gazillionaire. I'm still
Speaker 2: doing quite well and I have more than what I
Speaker 2: deserve in this world, as I think most folks that
Speaker 2: have realized some success in the tech industry end up having.
Speaker 1: Okay, Twitch is owned by Amazon. Amazon's culture historically is
Speaker 1: very lean financially. The layoffs you had to lay off
Speaker 1: some people. That does happen at big corporations. What are
Speaker 1: the advantages and disadvantages being owned by Amazon?
Speaker 2: So I think Amazon has been great for ensuring Twitch
Speaker 2: got to where we are. It took a fair amount
Speaker 2: of investment, not just from once they bought us, but
Speaker 2: to help Twitch grow Okay, and Amazon has been an
Speaker 2: extremely patient and supportive owner that allowed us to continue
Speaker 2: to invest and keep growing. Okay. So I don't know
Speaker 2: if Twitch could have gotten to where we are without
Speaker 2: someone like Amazon having been there. Okay. It is the fact.
Speaker 2: My view is so far in terms of Amazon pushing
Speaker 2: us in terms of how we run the business. I'm
Speaker 2: supportive of it because the way I describe it is
Speaker 2: I have a responsibility to make sure Twitch is here
Speaker 2: twenty years from now, thirty years from now, forty years
Speaker 2: from now, when somebody makes streaming their life. Twitch is
Speaker 2: different than all the other platforms. If we went away,
Speaker 2: these folks wouldn't necessarily just go to the other platforms
Speaker 2: and have the same life they lived lead today. It's
Speaker 2: very unique. And you know, they've been streaming now for
Speaker 2: five ten years, they have two kids. If they had
Speaker 2: to go get another job, the resume is like, what
Speaker 2: do you mean you've been streaming for seven years? Why
Speaker 2: would I hire you? Okay, So I have an obligation
Speaker 2: to make sure they like we're still here twenty thirty,
Speaker 2: forty years from now, which means I need to run
Speaker 2: this business so that it's sustainable. And Amazon's been very supportive,
Speaker 2: and so sometimes you have to make tough decisions. You know,
Speaker 2: when we had to make layoffs, we'd gotten bigger than
Speaker 2: we needed to be, And I do think that's happened
Speaker 2: in a lot of tech industry where people just think,
Speaker 2: you know, get bigger, get bigger, get bigger, and you
Speaker 2: don't need to be bigger. So I feel really good
Speaker 2: about where we are today. I feel we've shown that
Speaker 2: it's a sustainable business if you will, that our business works,
Speaker 2: and so I feel very good about, you know, the
Speaker 2: support we've had from Amazon, and I don't think there
Speaker 2: are a lot of you know, these downsides that we've had.
Speaker 1: Are you still married to the mother of your children?
Speaker 2: I am. I am still with her and everything.
Speaker 1: This is a business that usually requires very long hours.
Speaker 1: How do you sustain a marriage.
Speaker 2: Well, Luckily, I'm someone who aside from my and it's
Speaker 2: not just the marriage kids. So I have a kid
Speaker 2: who's twenty seven and one who's twenty four. My twenty
Speaker 2: seven year old has a has a daughter. So I'm
Speaker 2: a grandm father. I just spent the weekend. I took
Speaker 2: care of my grand daughter from ten to five on Saturday,
Speaker 2: and then from you know, nine to twelve. So I'm
Speaker 2: someone who spent a lot of time with my kids.
Speaker 2: They both live near me now, and so I'd say
Speaker 2: the biggest thing is I don't push to create all
Speaker 2: this time that's just for me. I don't have like
Speaker 2: boys weekends. I don't go off golfing all day Saturday
Speaker 2: and Sunday or something like that. You know when in
Speaker 2: terms of I work hard, I exercise, and I spend
Speaker 2: time with my family. Those are basically the three things
Speaker 2: that I do, and there's enough time in the day
Speaker 2: for all three. There's probably enough, not enough time in
Speaker 2: the day if I wanted to do all these other things,
Speaker 2: you know, just for myself.
Speaker 1: Okay, when you're in the tech bubble and you're talking
Speaker 1: about things, people will be able to understand what you say, cogitate,
Speaker 1: agree or disagree. But if you're at a pt A
Speaker 1: meeting or something, do you feel you're obviously intelligent, educated
Speaker 1: and aware of what's going on? I mean, do you
Speaker 1: find that it's hard to have satisfying conversations?
Speaker 2: Not at all, like literally not at all interesting. I
Speaker 2: think it comes to this issue of empathy. I was
Speaker 2: actually at a dinner last night with the friend of
Speaker 2: my daughters who had a reveal. And I live in
Speaker 2: White Salmon, Washington, which is a small town. It's an
Speaker 2: hour east of Portland. You know, the way I describe
Speaker 2: White Salmon as both talking about the population. It's a
Speaker 2: no safe way, no Starbucks, no McDonald's town. Okay, but
Speaker 2: one grocery store town in you know, seven restaurants Okay.
Speaker 2: So like when I describe it that way, you get
Speaker 2: a sense of or across the river from Hoodry, which
Speaker 2: is a to McDonald's town and a one Safeway town.
Speaker 2: And I use that because I think when now and
Speaker 2: one Walmart town, where I describe it like that, you
Speaker 2: kind of get a sense for the size of the town.
Speaker 2: And so these are folks doing all sorts of things
Speaker 2: in this region, right, and I like great conversations. Some
Speaker 2: of them are musicians. Interestingly, a number of one of
Speaker 2: them is someone who tried to be a musician for
Speaker 2: a while still writes music and records. My daughter's a
Speaker 2: singer songwriter. And so I just think that the reason
Speaker 2: people get stuck in that is because they're not very
Speaker 2: empathetic of different ways of living their life, and they
Speaker 2: think everything is living in this tech bubble, which is
Speaker 2: not what life's about.
Speaker 1: You mentioned Hood River. Are you a windsurfer?
Speaker 2: I'm a kayaker, Okay, So for those for your listeners
Speaker 2: that don't know, the beauty of this area is Hood
Speaker 2: River and the Columbia River which is between Hood River
Speaker 2: and White Salmon. In the nineties, all the windsurfers and
Speaker 2: kite borders came in the two thousand, all the kayakers
Speaker 2: came Okay, and I came here because I enjoyed whitewater kayaking.
Speaker 2: My son's are really good white water kayaking. And I
Speaker 2: love the area because it has both, like the all
Speaker 2: these kind of athletic folks came through, but it also
Speaker 2: there's a town close to Trout Lake where the hippies
Speaker 2: came in the sixties, and then you have the logging,
Speaker 2: and so it's really this blend. It's reasonably progressive, but
Speaker 2: not overly progressive. So I kind of like the blend.
Speaker 1: And why do you live there? And how long have
Speaker 1: you lived there?
Speaker 2: I lived there about three years. And the story is
Speaker 2: raised the kids in the Bay Area lived in Los Altos.
Speaker 2: That's where I was, That's where I first started working.
Speaker 2: When COVID hit. I realized the kids were never going
Speaker 2: to move back to the Bay Area because they're not
Speaker 2: into tech. They're both very much into outdoors and that
Speaker 2: sort of thing, and so I had this idea of
Speaker 2: buying land with enough property, with enough land that maybe
Speaker 2: one day they could build the are hopefully encouraged they
Speaker 2: would both have a son and daughter. I wanted them
Speaker 2: both to live in the same area. So that way
Speaker 2: their kids would be friends. Very first place we were
Speaker 2: looking at we were up here kayaking. We went to
Speaker 2: look at a place I thought it would take me
Speaker 2: two years to find something that. It was a great house.
Speaker 2: It was perfect. It was right on this river, the
Speaker 2: White Salmon River, twelve acres. So I decided to move
Speaker 2: up here. Both the kids live up here now, so
Speaker 2: if you will, it worked. They both moved the area.
Speaker 2: It's an hour from the Portland airport, so I could
Speaker 2: basically get most anywhere without having to I was an
Speaker 2: hour from the airport in the Bay Area, so I
Speaker 2: travel Fairmount for work. I'm down in LA. I'm down
Speaker 2: in the Bay Area about you know, two weeks of
Speaker 2: the year, I'm somewhere traveling. And I like a lot
Speaker 2: of outdoor stuff in terms of hiking and all that stuff,
Speaker 2: biking and running, and so it's ended up being you know,
Speaker 2: it's end up being perfect.
Speaker 1: Okay, Dan, I think we've come to the end of
Speaker 1: the feeling we've known. I want to thank you for
Speaker 1: making all this time with my audience. You've been a
Speaker 1: great guest, fascinating and hopefully people will listen to this
Speaker 1: and be hip to twitch.
Speaker 2: All right, well, I appreciate you taking time, Bob, and
Speaker 2: it was lots of fun and for I guess for
Speaker 2: those people that are listening. If there are any musicians
Speaker 2: that are listening right, feel free to reach out to
Speaker 2: me on social media or something like that. If you're
Speaker 2: a musician and you want to get we have a
Speaker 2: team to help you and you can find me on
Speaker 2: various different social media. I shall say it's DJ Clancy's
Speaker 2: very confusing, but reach out to me and I'll try
Speaker 2: to connect you with the right people on our.
Speaker 1: Well that's quite an offer, so thanks Dan. Till next time.
Speaker 1: This is bob Lefs